


and the creek don't rise

by elevenhurricanes



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Blood and Violence, Case Fic, Don't Go in the Woods, Eventual Romance, F/M, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Spooks and Possible Spectres, Suicidal Themes, of a background character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:00:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26196043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elevenhurricanes/pseuds/elevenhurricanes
Summary: Situated in the rural mountains of western Virginia, Coalwich Creek is a sleepy little town with a mysterious little secret.
Relationships: Alex Reagan/Richard Strand
Comments: 16
Kudos: 57





	and the creek don't rise

**Author's Note:**

> As per usual with my TBTP fics, this story contains a mixture of real and fake locations.  
> And yes, of course I made a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1RuINctCBD9D14dbak0MN6?si=Ye1nnWmgQVm9O3pnbZxPvQ) for this story.

Alex comes across the story by way of a group chat. 

It’s between several other podcasters and her, along with a few low-tier investigators. One of the two ghost hunters from LA shares it, mentioning that one of their fans left it in a comment on a YouTube video. If there’s one thing Alex is thankful for, it’s that the podcast doesn’t have to deal with the toxicity of public comment forums directly underneath her work -- her fans save it for Twitter, at least. 

Included with the link is a long string of ghost and peach emojis. 

It’s the peaches, she thinks, that catch her attention amongst all the other posts she scrolls through each day. (The chat is about ninety-three percent bitching about incessant fans, five percent old Vine compilations, and two percent actual, useful information.) The post leads her down a proverbial internet rabbit hole. It ends two hours later at the Wikipedia page for philosophy, as all internet dives do. 

Well, really, it ends with her in Nic’s office, a case folder stuffed full of police reports, missing persons posters, and geological surveys in hand. They have a debate (okay, an argument) on just how far from the Pacific Northwest she can take the show. To that, she reminds him that he approved her to go to New Mexico before. To that, he reminds her that it was at least on the same side of the country. 

She doesn’t have a rebuttal for that one. 

But four days later she’s on a flight to Roanoke, Virginia (that she paid for) and riding passenger in a luxury rental car (that she didn’t). An hour-thirty of twisting mountain roads later, she finds herself standing in the middle of a highway behind a makeshift barricade. Taped to it is a laminated sign that reads _DANGER AHEAD_ in Papyrus font. 

“This is underwhelming.” 

Beside her, Strand glares down at the torn earth as if it’s affronted him by its existence. It’s a glare Alex has been on the other end of before. 

A few feet beyond the barrier, the earth has been split apart. The ground is a ruined, rocky crevice, with chunks of asphalt clinging to either side. Some pieces have already fallen in, where they rest at the bottom of a fifty-foot drop. The crack travels from underneath the nearby mountain and across the road, where it disappears into the woods beside a double-wide trailer. Within two minutes of their arrival, a woman ambles out of the house to shout at them for going near the crack, then shouts at them some more when Alex tries to explain who they are. 

“Don’t need any more reporters!” the woman yells, her wrinkled cheeks wobbling as she does. 

“I agree.” Strand grips Alex’s elbow and urges her back towards their rental, having spotted the cop car climbing steadily up the hill towards them. 

“’specially none from up north,” the woman spits. She readjusts to continue her hollering, her pink slippers digging into her gravel driveway. “Don't you read up before you come down here?” 

The cop car eases to a stop behind them. The window rolls down to reveal a man, his barrel chest covered in shiny, gold badges. As if the patch on his upper arm isn’t enough of a clue as to his rank, the giant letters stamped on the car certainly are. The three of them watch as the sheriff lazily swings open his door and hefts himself out of the car. 

“This must be a record,” Strand mutters. “It took at least twenty minutes for the realtor at that supposedly haunted condo complex to call the cops on you.” 

“If you’ll recall, you were there too.”

“The most frightening thing about that place were the HOA fees.” 

She opens her mouth to serve a joke right back when she’s interrupted by the sheriff. 

“Morning, Millie. These the two folks you called about?” He isn’t wearing a hat, but Alex imagines he would be tucking it underneath his arm right about now. 

Millie wraps her housecoat tighter around herself and nods.

“They were up there sniffin’ around. They say they’re reporters from up north.” 

“We’re from Seattle, actually,” Alex jumps in, motioning to the recorder in her hands. “My name is Alex Reagan, I’m a journalist for Pacific Northwest Stories, and this is Doctor Strand, he’s--” 

“A skeptic.” 

The sheriff frowns at him. “What’s there to be skeptical about with a hole in the ground?” 

Alex sees Strand’s spine straighten in her periphery and decides she’ll spare them all the forty-minute lecture on seismic activity she heard on the plane. 

“We’re here because of the mysterious deaths surrounding its appearance,” she explains. 

“And I’m here to be skeptical about them,” Strand adds in his standard-issue dry tone. 

The sheriff’s lip twitches upwards. 

“Don’t give a shit who y’all are. I don’t want you on my property!” 

“Well, now, Millie, their vehicle is parked out on the road--” 

“They shouldn’t be parked out there neither!” she declares in response, her cheeks now the same shade of pink as her housecoat’s polka dots. 

Strand catches Alex’s eye and nods his head towards the car, to which she signals her agreement. 

“Listen,” she starts, “we’re sorry for bothering you. We’ll go ahead and--” 

“Ma’am!” the sheriff shouts and Alex jolts at the volume, turning from the disgruntled homeowner to see the sheriff starting for the road. 

A late-model sedan rolls to a stop on the other side of the barricade. The driver side door swings open and an older woman climbs out. Alex tracks her blonde head of hair as she rounds the vehicle, ignoring the sheriff and heading straight for the barricades. “Ma’am, this area’s off limits! Back away from there!” he tries again, rushing towards her as best he can. 

The woman looks up at him, then on to the rest of them where they stand, frozen in the driveway. A chill runs down Alex’s spine at her expression. It’s like there’s nothing going on behind her eyes. “Ma’am! Ma’am, get back now!” 

Next to them, Millie lets out a ragged little sigh and turns her head, letting go of her housecoat to clap her hands over her ears. Unable to cross, the sheriff stops at the edge and throws up his hands just as the woman shoves past the barricades on her side. “Ma’am, stop!” he begs. 

There’s not a moment of hesitation before Alex sees her blonde hair disappear over the edge. A moment of Millie’s rough breathing, then: the sickening thud of body meeting rock. The awful sound shakes Alex from her stupor; she whirls, nearly slipping on the loose gravel, and claps a hand over her mouth. 

It’s nothing like the movies, where the camera pans away and the scene changes to the investigation scene or to the morgue or to the funeral. There’s no mounting soundtrack, no crashing symbols or droning cello. The birds continue their songs, sweet and pretty, in the branches of the nearby trees, their waxy leaves rustling in the cool wind. Focusing on a patch of daffodils in Millie’s yard, Alex watches the breeze ruffle their thin leaves and tries to keep her breathing even. Strand’s hand comes up to grasp her shoulder, squeezing gently and guiding her closer. She moves without hesitation and leans into him, the wool of his sweater soft underneath her forehead. 

From behind them, the sheriff mumbles orders into his radio. The crackle of dispatch responding echoes across the yard. His shoes crunch in the gravel as he walks back over to them. 

“Millie, I’ll be sending CC up here to get your statement, if that’s all right.” His hand rubs soothing circles against her back as the older woman sniffles. “I’ll walk you back up to the house.” 

She nods and heads for her home, her pink slippers scuffing across the driveway. 

“And you two,” the sheriff starts, turning to face them. “You’ll follow me back to the station for your statements.” 

The tone is polite, but Alex hears the undertone of authority. Her plans to go straight to their lodging and fold herself under the blankets is shoved to the wayside as she nods her agreement. Beside her, Strand does the same. The sheriff, seemingly satisfied, turns back to catch up with Millie. 

They pass the barricades as they head back to the rental car. Overwhelmed with morbid curiosity, Alex shifts to look over her shoulder. Strand grasps her elbow and shakes his head. 

“Don’t,” he murmurs. 

Those blue eyes of his hold hers until they’re at the car, where he holds open the door for her to climb in. He backs the car up and moves it to face south, overlooking the hills and fields. In the rearview, framed by the back window, the woman’s car sits abandoned, the door still ajar. 

They both watch a white cruiser take the left at the stop sign at the bottom of the hill and begin the climb up. A few lengths behind is an ambulance. 

“Are you willing to reconsider that something strange is going on in this town, now?” 

Next to her, Strand shifts in his seat before releasing a sigh. 

“Perhaps.” 

\----- 

The drive to the police station takes them back down the highway. 

After a few miles, they turn off onto another state road, and then another. Alex tries to pay attention to the numbers, given that her typical four bars of service keeps dropping down to zero as they drive further into the mountains. 

Outside the window, red cedars are tufts of dark green peppering the low hills. Towering high along the ridgelines are hemlocks, their feathery branches stripped in patches. Thin barbed-wire fences frame overgrown pastures, where horses and cattle seem to float in the green seas of grass. Weathered barns are dark, worn smudges against the cloudy sky, their tin roofs tarnished with age. The only vehicle they pass is a rusted pickup truck, its bed covered with a tarp. The driver flicks a hand up to them in greeting. 

The town seems to sneak up on them as they round a curve. The trees recede and the landscape shifts to frame the community of Coalwich Creek. A no-stoplights, no-chain-stores, no-coffee-shops kind of tiny; a blink-and-miss-it town. There were no battlefields, no historical events to draw in the tourists. The Unicoi Mountains roll lazily on either side of the town, enclosing it within Hungry Mother Cove. The creek that runs down from the ridge and into the valley makes a brief appearance under a well-worn, one-lane bridge, before disappearing back into the hills.

The only real indication that it’s a proper town is the small, green sign posted up on the shoulder of the highway, the population count spray-painted over with question marks. Underneath the sign, a deer lifts her head to watch them pass.

There’s Coalwich Creek Baptist and Coalwich Creek Methodist, their steeples a sparkling white, their concrete stoops cracked. There’s a Shell station, its windows plastered with lottery ticket posters; following it is a stretch of abandoned and boarded-up buildings. An antique shop, its porch full of weathered bed frames and dented Coca-Cola signs, is the only place with an open sign in the window. On down the road is Good Deel Auto Shop and Sales, where bright, yellow flags announce _Low Prices!!_ next to a pair of rusted GMC box trucks. 

It could be any other town on the map, with its sad, little excuse for a downtown and its propensity for one-lane roads named after white men, all likely long dead. What puts it apart from the rest is the mysterious sinkhole that divides the town. 

On paper it’s called the Cicada Crack, given its routine appearance every seven to twelve years. The surrounding states refer to it as Virginia’s Ass Crack. The locals call it the Nuisance. 

In the late seventies, the governor rounded up a few scientists to investigate the natural disaster that seemed to be on some sort of timer. Though they found nothing concrete, geologists believed it was partly due to the effects of coal mining. Given that the state’s small area of coal country was an hour north in Buchanan County, the locals (eighty percent of which worked in the mines) disagreed with the findings. Instead, they blamed it on heavy rains, or those tricky and misunderstood tectonic plates. 

For the three to six weeks it appears, the crack isn’t just trouble for the traffic routes and VDOT budget. The most severe (and, thus, most controversial) issue is the amount of people that are seemingly drawn to it, sometimes compelled enough to leap to their deaths. Though local articles are vague (given the difficult rules around reporting suicides, most outlets avoid it all-together), Alex figures that roughly two to eight people die each year it appears. This excludes the amount of people that also go missing alongside its appearance, which ranges from three to eleven. Locals, tourists, runaways, truck drivers, and thru-hikers, it doesn’t matter. They’ll kick and scream, fight and claw their way to ford any barriers or sneak past the neighborhood watch to try to jump in. 

Nic had likened it to the Overtoun Bridge in Dumbarton, Scotland, where supposed supernatural factors cause dogs to jump to their deaths. Strand had pointed out that suicide in the Appalachian region was twenty-five percent higher than anywhere else in the country (and that humans were more complex than dogs -– to which Nic had disagreed). 

Aside from those few local articles, some brief mentions on Twitter, and the website _Haunted Dixie_ that still featured GeoCities banners for sister sites that were long gone, Alex found next to nothing on the Cicada Crack. Haunted Dixie’s owner blamed the deaths on the underground water that the crack disturbs each time it appears, which results in the water being diverted into nearby Unicoi Lake, raising its levels. According to Kershaw, this disturbs the rumored Native American burial grounds there, the spirits amplified by the limestone cliffs. And even she had to agree with Strand’s scoff at that ridiculous (and, frankly, offensive) idea. 

Their car screeches to a stop, pulling Alex from her study of the countryside. 

Ahead of them, the sheriff passes over a makeshift bridge that crosses this winding arm of the crack. Made from what appears to be thirty feet of wooden planks bolted together, the metal trestle supports disappear into the sinkhole. 

“You have got to be joking.”

“He drove on it.” Alex ignores the incredulous look and shrugs. “It’s not as if we have much of a choice.” 

With some significant amount of grumbling, Strand eases off the brake and rolls across the bridge. They make it to the other side without incident. 

Up ahead, two women stand under the covered porch of a diner, cigarettes perched high in their hands. One woman waggles her fingers at them and smirks, while the older woman glares at their car as they pass. Alex feels as if she should be in the back of the sheriff’s cruiser to earn such a glance, and quickly looks away to her companion. 

He’s been quiet for the most part, pointedly turning up the radio when Alex shifted in her seat, as if he knew she was about to pepper him with questions (which she’d held back, knowing she couldn’t compete with an ever-increasing Matt Berninger). 

“Are you all right?” 

The surprise must be evident on her face at the sudden question. He catches her expression and a wince flashes across his features. “I’m -- I know, I should’ve asked long before whatever mile marker we’ve reached.” 

“I’m okay.” She tries to make it as convincing as possible, but at the look of disbelief she’s getting, she assumes it didn’t land. “It’s... I mean, I researched the occurrences here. I should’ve expected one might happen while we’re here for these few days, but I –- I was really hoping it would all be some big, insensitive practical joke.” 

Strand hums, for once not coming back at her theory with a sharp retort. 

Waiting for him to say more (and knowing that he won’t), Alex turns back to the view out her window. Clouds of white float by, the dogwood trees close to the road blooming bright. Up ahead, a handmade sign hangs from a barbed-wire fence: _If you was to die tonite, Heaven or Hell?_

\-----

The Staley County Sheriff’s Office is a long, low building situated a few miles out of town.

Taking up most of the parking lot are three school buses, two cruisers, and a camper van on blocks. The sheriff swings into his dedicated spot, while Strand pulls into the single marked visitor spot. 

“Morning!” the cheery receptionist greets from her desk. “What can I help you folks with?” 

“They’re the ones who saw the lady this morning,” the sheriff explains. 

The receptionist’s face drops, her glossy, pink lips rounding as she sighs and shakes her head. 

“Oh, well, now, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry, I know how awful that must’ve been.” Swiveling in her chair, she darts over to the low cabinets along the far wall, and starts fussing over the half-empty coffee pot. “I’ve got some water bottles here somewhere, and some of those Little Debbie muffins and there’s some bananas in the back, but I can get--” 

“They’re fine, Melinda,” the sheriff cuts her off before Alex can take up her offer for the water. “We’ll be in my office. Send CC back to me when he rings. If my brother calls, send him over to Stevens.”

With that, he heads down the main hallway. Alex starts to bring up the rear, then pauses and retraces her steps back to the desk. Melinda is still rifling through the cabinets and muttering to herself about men. 

“Hi, I’m sorry, but I was wondering if I could--” 

Before she can make her request, Melinda straightens up with a water bottle in hand. 

“Of course! Here you go, sweetie. And,” she dips down again to wrestle out another bottle and hands it over, “take this one to your boyfriend.” 

“Oh, he’s not--” 

“Miss Reagan!” the sheriff calls from his open door, where Strand hovers uncertainly. “If you’d kindly join us.” 

Murmuring her thanks to Melinda, she heads down the hall and slips into the office, taking one of two plastic chairs in front of the sheriff’s desk. A brass nameplate reads _SHERIFF MIKE DEEL_. 

Next to her, Strand’s fingers tap at the arm of his chair as he takes in the drab office. Alex knows how wary he is of the police. He’d been a murder suspect, after all, in his wife’s own disappearance; he’d been put through the ringer of the forty-eight-hour hold. She’d asked him about it once, when thinking back to Charlesworth and his cushy afternoon drink with Sheriff Osenga.

“Sometimes, it’s better to establish yourself on the good side of the law. And his scotch was surprisingly top quality.” It had been another non-answer, vague enough to be frustrating, but straight-forward enough for it to be silly for her to push. So, she hadn’t.

“I have a quick question before we start,” Alex says. 

“Yes, Miss Reagan?” 

“Can I record this?” 

Deel closes the door behind him and lets out a long sigh. “I suppose I don’t see the harm in it.” 

The recorder is out of her bag and on top of the desk before he can make it to his chair. “So,” he grunts as he settles in, “let’s start from the top, hmm?” 

Alex does start from the top, or as close to it as she can, before Deel stops to finally ask her the question she’s been waiting for. She takes the time to explain what a podcast is, and what the show is about, and why in the hell they’re all the way out east when it’s called Pacific Northwest Stories. As complete polar opposites as they were, Sheriff Deel and Nic Silver sure had the same opinion when it came to geography. 

Just as they finally start the actual witness statement, there’s a commotion from the hallway. 

“If you’d just wait up front with me, sir, I’ll make sure--” Melinda is pleading as the door swings inward, knocking against the back wall; picture frames rattle at the impact.

“Thank you, Miss Howell, but I’ll speak with him now.” 

A man steps into the room, slamming the door in Melinda’s face before she can follow him in. Dressed in a fitted polo and khaki slacks, he tucks a pair of Ray Bans into his shirt pocket as he glances at Alex and Strand. Whatever he sees, he immediately dismisses them and swings his gaze back to the sheriff. 

“Morning, Johnson,” Deel greets, his mouth twisting down into a grimace. “There any particular reason you’re barging into my office when I’m busy with--” 

“There is, actually,” Johnson interrupts. “I wanted to come down in person so you can explain to me why I got a call from Channel 6 this morning wanting me to confirm another jumper. This being the third one this month, I wanted to personally see that you were actually doing your job.” 

Alex can practically hear Deel’s teeth grinding from across the desk. 

“We are doing the best we can with what we have. I don’t have the man-power or the OT to spare to patrol every inch of town, seeing as the county commission didn’t approve of our request for more funding last month.” His hands curl into fists atop his desk. “When I asked for your help to convince them, I didn’t hear jack shit.”

“We told you to trim the budget of all nonessential staff.” 

Deel heaves a sigh. “We already did that.” 

Johnson glances back at the closed door. “Clearly not.” 

The scarlet tint of anger rises higher on Deel’s face. 

“I ain’t firing Melinda. She’s the only one who helps hold this shit together, since we had to lay off the evening gal.” 

“Then cut a higher salary and see if she’d be interested in some overtime,” Johnson suggests with a shrug. “It’s not rocket science.” 

“I ain’t having her play suicide watch. You know about her brother -– or you would,” Deel sneers, “if you’d grown up around here.” 

“The governor wanted someone with no ties here, so I could make the calls that needed to be made.”

Deel snorts at that and shakes his head, before his gaze flickers over to Alex and Strand. The frown on his face shifts into something smug, the corner of his lip twitching upwards. 

“Well, since you’re the new mayor here and all, I want you to know that poor woman won’t be the last, not with the budget you allotted. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a witness report to finish.” He motions to the two of them, still sitting quietly in their seats. “They’re from Seattle -- Miss Reagan here is a reporter. They’re here about the Nuisance.” 

Alex watches Johnson’s expression change within a second; the hostile glare melts away to a smarmy grin as he turns to address her.

“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Reagan. Let me apologize for taking up your time -- even small-town business can’t wait. You understand, of course.” 

“Of course,” Alex nods. 

“Here, why don’t I make it up to you? Come over to Dandey’s this evening and I’ll give you an interview.” He reaches into his pocket and hands her a business card with his title and office number stamped across in gold. “Friday’s special is catfish. Best food in town.” 

“It's the only food in town,” Deel mutters. 

Johnson ignores the comment and instead shoots Alex a beaming smile. 

“I’ll see you there.” Then, without waiting for her agreement to the sudden dinner plans, he slides out his sunglasses and breezes through the door. 

Deel settles back down into his chair and grumbles to himself, too low for her to catch anything other than some tasteful insults. 

“Now, where were--” A knock at the door cuts him off. “Jesus H. Christ,” he calls out, “what is it now?” 

The door opens slowly and a young man leans through the doorway. The uniform he’s wearing hangs off his slim frame, his belt cinched tight around his hips; he reminds Alex of a kid playing dress-up in his parents’ clothes. 

“I’m sorry, sir, but Melinda sent me on back. I just come from gettin’ Miss Taylor settled. I called her sister who lives up in Reeces Chapel and she’s comin’ down to be with her. Got the car towed back to impound and Leslie’s got the body to the morgue.” His update complete, he steps fully into the room and shuts the door behind him, straightening up when he spots Alex and Strand. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was interruptin’.” 

“It’s fine, CC,” Deel sighs. “Once Leslie confirms identity, let me know. I’ll locate next-of-kin and make the visit.” 

CC -- or Deputy Clinkenbeard, as his badge labels him -- nods before scurrying out. Watching the door for a few moments, Deel seems satisfied they won’t be bothered again, and returns to the report below him. “Okay, Miss Reagan, from the top.” 

\-----

Alex navigates into a spot, muttering under her breath about oversized pickup trucks and the need for compensation. 

The diner they passed earlier is bustling, the parking lot full. Despite the cool evening, people linger at their tailgates to continue their dinner conversations as children play tag in the field nearby. 

“We could have gotten dinner at the bed and breakfast, you realize.” It’s not the first (or second) time Strand has offered such a reminder. 

“You can go back if you’d like,” she offers with a grin. 

He makes a noise at that, as if the idea is a terrible one. They pass an aging marquee sign that lists the daily specials, the lightbulb inside of it flickering out of time with the muffled country music that drifts from the building. Above their heads, another sign is nailed to the porch:

_DANDEY’S_

_ONLY FOOD IN TOWN_

Alex murmurs her thanks as he holds the door open for her. Taking two steps inside, she’s hit with the smell of fried food and cheap beer. A short bar occupies the far-left wall, where men and women in dusty jeans and sooty T-shirts sip on bottles of Budlight. Along the opposite side, families and packs of teenagers occupy the booths. At the back, two large speakers frame a makeshift dance floor, where the rest of the patrons dance along to a lively song about a man being left on the side of the road by his lover. 

“Y’all just sit wherever. I’ll be with you in a jiffy!” a waitress calls out from the other end of the diner. 

“And you were hoping to interview someone here?” Strand asks as they slide into the only open booth, having to forgo his usual muttering so Alex can hear him above the chatter and electric guitar. 

Having positioned herself in the corner, she gives a cursory sweep of the place and finally spots Mayor Todd Johnson, as his card stated, squeezed into a booth with a woman and two toddlers. Alex isn’t a politics reporter -- and tries to keep out of it as much as possible when it comes to her professional life -- but she would like to ask about his choice to fund a shiny, new football stadium over improved barricades to prevent his citizens from falling to their deaths. 

The familial sight of him eating dinner with his presumed wife and kids should ease some of her discomfort about the man. But there’s something off about him. She wants to chalk it down to him being an ass and move on, but her instincts are telling her to push. And, as Strand can attest to, she’s never been particularly good at telling her instincts _no_. 

“How are y’all this evening?” This close, Alex realizes their waitress is one of the women from when they passed by while following Sheriff Deel -- the one who didn’t glare at their car. “My name’s Joy and I’ll be taking care of y’all. What would you like to start off with?” 

Alex lets Strand order first, knowing he’ll ask about the liquor choices, even though he knows as well as she does that the highest shelf he can hope for here is the middle. She opts for water, not wanting to get liquored-up before meeting with Johnson. 

Throughout the entire meal, she notices that no one ever approaches his table. In fact, they seem to actively avoid it, skirting towards the dance floor the opposite way. Newcomers arrive and step up to the bar to jerk their thumbs back towards him, rolling their eyes and frowning as they duck their heads together to converse. 

She’s just finishing off her food when she spots the tight polo in the corner of her vision. 

“Miss Reagan,” Johnson grins, placing a hand on the back of her booth, “it’s a pleasure to see you again. I hope Dandey’s lived up to her name.” 

“As the only food in town?” Strand mocks. “Yes.” 

Alex shoots him a look, which he ignores in favor of continuing his thinly-veiled glare at Johnson. Before she can be pushed into the corner of post-meal small talk, she pulls her recorder from her bag and gives it a little shake. 

“Food was great, yeah,” she says. “But it’s getting late, though, and I’m sure you and your family would like to head home. Would now be a good time for that quick chat? I just have some questions about the town for my podcast.” 

Johnson takes a step back and offers a hand to help her up from the booth. Catching her gaze as she stands up, Strand glances between Johnson and her, a wordless question in the set of his eyebrows. She gives him a small shake of her head and that seems to settle the matter; he sits back in his seat and busies himself with the last of his meal. 

As Alex follows Johnson towards the door, she can feel Strand’s gaze on her back. The reassuring weight of it warms something in her chest. It hadn’t taken much to convince him to come along, not after they’d hit another roadblock in their black tapes. And so he’d broken his only rule when it came to his agreement about being featured on her podcast: he’d agreed to come, despite there being no black tape. 

That didn’t mean, of course, he hadn’t tried to fight back with his patented ‘Doctor Richard Strand’s Why This is a Waste of Time Reasonings.’ 

“Rural towns have to make money somehow,” he had suggested when they met up for coffee. At his insistence, mind -- he’d wanted to rehash about a black tape that Alex thought they’d already scrutinized to death. “It’s a glorified tourist attraction.” 

She had paused in the middle of her blueberry muffin to offer him a look of her own. 

“Where people leap to their deaths.” 

“Or, more accurately, people accidentally fall in -- due to being inebriated or tired or ignorant of proper signage -- and the local press spins it another way,” he’d argued. “It wouldn’t be the first podunk town we’ve come across that used personal tragedy for profit.” 

Although he hadn’t explicitly mentioned Charlesworth by name, Alex hadn’t needed him to -- she still hadn’t forgotten about the parade of people with upside-down masks as they moved slowly down the street, a sick celebration of a horrific crime. 

“So, is that a ‘no’ from you?” 

“Oh, no -- I mean, yes, I would be interested in going. If not for the thrilling prospect of a supposedly-haunted hole in the ground, but to see the disappointment on your face when we confirm that it is nothing more.” 

He hadn’t bothered to hide the smirk on his face as he leaned an elbow on the table, his eyes shining with levity at his teasing. Alex had blamed the hot coffee on the stupid rush of heat across her cheeks. 

The sudden wall of cool air against her arms snaps Alex out of the memory. She steps out onto the porch, following Johnson to a pair of Adirondack chairs in the corner. The last colors of the day reflect in the cars’ windshields, the soft oranges and pinks melting into the late evening blue. 

She spends ten minutes listening to him talk about the history of the town -- much of which she already knows, considering the hour-long conversation she had with the town librarian days ago. So, she already knows of the town’s creation in 1832, its involvement in the Civil War and every subsequent war afterwards, and its height of prosperity during the coal mining boom of the early 1900s. 

“I read the report that came out in 1978, about how coal mining was partly to blame for the sinkhole. What are your thoughts on that study?” she asks. 

“There have been many studies on the effects of coal mining, but at the end of the day, it provides a great many jobs to people in rural areas such as ours.” 

It’s the weak response she expected, which is why it was a warm-up for her next one. 

“Regardless of what produces the sinkhole, then, why isn’t the town doing more to stop the deaths it causes? From what I’ve read, it only appears for three or so weeks every seven to twelve years. I would figure that something that results in such a death toll would create more concern from the community. Everyone here seems to act like it doesn’t exist, though. I asked my server and she refused to talk about it.”

His mouth twists downwards, annoyance flitting across his face.

“We take all preventative measures that we can, Miss Reagan. The police perform routine patrols; there are barricades in place to stop people from getting near the edge.”

“But the barricades aren’t enough. I watched a woman get around them, moments before she leapt to her death.” It’s a risky barb, but it gets her what she wanted. For a politician, Johnson isn’t the best at schooling his features. The indignation at her comments is plain for her to see -- but she’d been expecting that, too. What surprises her is the lack of concern, whether faked or not. 

“And, while that is a tragedy and our thoughts and prayers are with her family,” he responds, his tone embodying the regard that’s nowhere to be seen on his face, “we have no control over someone’s personal, though tragic, decision to ignore the warning signs and barricades.” 

The porch suddenly feels too small for both of them; Alex leans back into the shelter of her chair, away from Johnson and the callous expression he wears. A cold breeze rushes through, bringing with it the biting promise of an evening rain. 

“Are you cold, Miss Reagan?” he inquires, standing up and placing a hand on her arm. A shiver runs through her at his touch. “Let’s cut the interview short and get you back inside. It can get awfully chilly up here in the mountains at night.” 

Knowing that she won’t be getting anything substantial from him anyway, Alex gets up and moves out of his grasp. The inside of the diner is a welcome sight, as is Strand, who immediately catches her eye from across the room. 

Before she can head that way, a hand brushes against her shoulder. She whirls, ready to deal with Johnson -- instead, Joy drops her hand and gives her a timid smile. 

“I wanted to let you know that I talked to a few of the locals and they’d be willing to be on your show, if you’d like.” Alex glances over to the bar, where several men and women are eyeing her from their perches. “I’d like to talk to you myself, but my momma idn’t too keen on the idea.” 

Jerking a thumb over her shoulder, Joy motions to the kitchen window where a woman watches the two of them, her features folded down into a frown. It’s the same expression from earlier, though she’s missing the cigarette. 

Figuring that she might as well try to get some usable audio tonight, Alex checks her recorder’s battery, approaches the bar, and orders a beer. 

“You really come all the way down here from Seattle for a hole in the ground?” Sam Dewine asks after introductions to the rest of his coal mining crew. Next to him, Sylvie Franklin snorts and shakes her head. 

“Ma’am, I hate to tell you this, but I think you wasted a perfectly good plane ride.” 

Alex glances between the miners, reading past the guileful sheen in their eyes. She knows that they only agreed to talk to her so they could politely run her out of the diner, sooner rather than later. Instead of taking the hint and retreating, she tips her head towards Johnson’s booth, where his wife is wrangling their children into their jackets, while Johnson thumbs at his phone. 

“You agree with the mayor, then?”

Some of the miners straighten on their stools at the question. Their distaste is evident on their faces. 

“Depends on what he said, I guess,” Sam eventually says. 

“He said that the barricades do enough prevention.” Alex shrugs and takes a pull of her beer. “But I know that deaths still happen. Someone who worked in the Arlie Mine died the last time the crack appeared, right? Was he a friend of yours?”

“Marcus Howell.” Sylvie nods, drawing a sharp breath in as she continues, “Yeah, he was one of ours.” 

Alex already knows about the story, thanks to Sheriff Deel. Marcus and Melinda Howell were heading back home from their mother’s after Sunday lunch when Marcus took a wrong turn and drove straight to the crack’s edge. After several minutes of Melinda trying to pull her brother back into the car, he got loose and dove into the sinkhole, dying two days later from his injuries. In the police report that Alex obtained, Melinda stated that Marcus kept shouting ‘she’s in trouble,’ though Melinda also mentioned there was no one else out there with them. There was a short addendum that the surrounding area was searched, but no other victims were found. 

“I’m just wondering, then, if something else needs to be done, when deaths still occur even with the barricades in place?” Alex asks. “Or why a man like Marcus would fight his own sister to jump into a sixty-foot hole?” 

The group shares another weighted glance with each other. At the back of the diner, the song changes from a slow ballad to a jumbled mess of fiddles and steel guitars. 

“We think that he must’ve seen--”

“The night’s too young for this kind of talk,” Sam declares, cutting off one of his men as he steps down from his barstool. “And I sure do love this song. Would you like to dance, Miss Reagan?” 

Gripping her beer tight, she pulls it close to her chest, as if it will shield her from the offer. 

“Oh, no thanks, I’m not much of a dancer--”

“Bullshit!” he crows, chuckling as he takes the beer from her and sets it down on the bartop. “Besides, anybody can dance to this.” 

With that, he puts a hand on her upper back and guides her towards the dance floor, where people are shuffling in time to the drums. Having never danced to a song about a watermelon festival, Alex is at a total loss until the crowd around them starts into an electric slide. Sam guides her into the turns and helps keep her upright when she stumbles through the two-step section. For several, torturous seconds, she considers stepping away. But then again, immersing herself with the locals is one of the best ways to get people talking, who in turn will ask her questions, and that’s generally the best way to rope someone into an interview. So, against her own music tastes, she stays.

The distraction of dancing works just as planned, though. The song isn’t even finished when Sam slips from her side and disappears into the crowd -- though not before tossing back his well-wishes for a safe trip home. 

She spins on her heel, intent on chasing him down. If he won’t talk, maybe she can get another one of them alone, maybe Sylvie or the other man will speak without their friends breathing down their -- 

“Sam’s got two left feet there, dudn’t he?” someone shouts next to her ear, their hand catching her arm and tugging her deeper onto the dance floor. The song changes and Alex is swept into a half-assed box step, the man leading her swaying under the influence of too many rounds. As she’s trying to work herself free, a familiar face appears beside her. 

“I think your buddies are leavin’ there without you,” Deputy Clinkenbeard warns, clapping him on the back as he drops Alex and makes for the door. They watch as he stumbles into the waiting arms of his pack of friends. “Sorry about that, Miss Reagan.” 

“Thanks for the save,” she smiles, then offers her hand -- to keep the law on her good side and all. “Would you like to dance, Deputy?”

“Oh, well, yeah, ‘course,” he stammers out as he takes her hand and leads them into a dance, matching the pace of the surrounding shuffle. 

After a few turns around the floor, CC clears his throat. “I didn’t come over here just to scoot around the floor, though -- as much as I’m enjoying myself, ‘course. I know you’re trying to get interviews for your podcast. My sister listens to a lot of those; she especially likes the one about the two ladies talking about murder. Can’t tell you how excited she was when she saw you’d booked a room at her bed 'n breakfast.”

Alex smiles. “She mentioned as much.” 

“Right, well, the other reason I come over here was ‘cause I wanted to warn you about somebody.” His cheerful tone drops as he leans in closer. “You’re probably gonna hear his name quite a bit, once you get to talkin’ to folks, and I want you to know that he ain’t somebody that you wanna deal with.” 

“What’s his name?” she asks, trying to keep the immediate interest off her face. 

“Bobby Fontaine.” Something must tip him off, because he gives her a stern look as he spins her out and back in, the song coming to a close. “I’m serious. He’s annoying as all get out, got nothing to share but baloney stories. He’s a weird fella.” 

“Understood, Deputy,” she promises, with every intention of ignoring him. 

Shaking his head, CC lets out an exasperated sigh and starts to try to talk some sense into her. Or that’s what she assumes he’s going to try for, but then something behind her catches his eye and makes him smirk. Before she can ask, there’s a warm hand brushing against the middle of her back and that familiar sandalwood cologne envelops her. She drops her hand from CC’s as she turns, raising an eyebrow at her partner’s sudden appearance. Giving her a nod, CC dips out and disappears into the crowd. 

Alex expects that Strand is done; he must be tired of waiting in the corner and he wants to go check in to their accommodations. 

“Mind if I cut in?” he asks instead, holding a hand out for her to take. 

The notes of the next song trickle out of the speakers; it’s a slow song, a woman crooning about taking chances. Alex takes his hand and follows his lead, stepping close as they join the couples around them. 

“I’m surprised you wanted to dance,” she says. “You never struck me as the type to want to ‘boot, scoot, and boogie.’” 

Strand rolls his eyes. “My feet were hurting watching them drag you around.” 

He steps back and spins her out before bringing her back into the circle of his arms. “Besides, if I hadn’t jumped in, I wouldn’t have known why you would be so enthusiastic about meeting this Bobby Fontaine tomorrow.” 

Alex tries to keep her expression neutral, but he must see the disappointment on her face; he sighs and shakes his head. “Didn’t think I was close enough to hear that, hmm?”

“No,” she pouts, shifting closer as another couple sways into her back and apologizes through their drunken giggles. 

He tips his head down, his mouth close to her ear to be heard over the bustle of the crowd. 

“Curiosity killed the cat.” His tease has a melodious tone to it that speaks to the four beers he’s had. 

“And satisfaction brought her back,” Alex finishes for him. 

A shiver runs through her at the feel of his breath on her neck. She catches his gaze when he pulls back; the smarmy grin on his face tells her that he knows exactly what kind of effect he has. “You’re not going to change my mind. Everyone else has been too tight-lipped to get much of anything from. He might be my first solid lead.”

“Even if what he has to say is cryptic nonsense?”

She smiles at the reference. “I do like hearing cryptic nonsense.” 

“Oh, I recall,” Strand drawls in that dry tone of his. He twirls her out again and tugs her back; his hand is hot against her waist, his fingers rumpling the cotton of her sweater. “We’ll go together, then.” 

“Okay,” she nods. “Together.”

\-----

When Alex asks about Fontaine at the gas station the next morning, the clerk refuses to talk about it.

It’s an unfortunate quality that most of the town’s citizens have, she’s finding out. She pokes around the store for a few more minutes, hoping her continued presence and purchase of entirely too many energy drinks will encourage the clerk to cave. Which is how she comes to be standing next to their rental car, sipping from an electric-blue can and scowling at the dark clouds on the horizon. 

“This is why it helps to have an in,” she grumbles, wincing at the fruity flavor on her tongue.

Strand hums at her complaint. “Places like this want their privacy.”

“I know. It’s annoying.”

“It also explains why you found next to nothing, article-wise.” Leaning against the car next to her, he watches as she takes another sip. “I don’t see how you can drink those things.”

“Decaf was all they had ready.” 

“Did you get any sleep last night?” 

Alex thinks back to the long night she spent in the cozy, nautical-themed suite -- named _The Coast_ , according to the sign on her door -- staring at the ceiling. After three hours of replaying the image of that woman leaping to her death, she concluded that sleep was not going to greet her with its presence. 

“Yeah.” 

It’s the truth, although she isn’t sure that the brief, forty-minute nap she had between reruns of _The Golden Girls_ counted as real, actual sleep. 

Strand turns from the view to cast a critical eye over her form, making her bristle when his irritation transforms into concern -- angry Strand she can handle, but worried Strand she cannot. 

There’s something to be said about how liars can spot fellow liars. Maybe that’s why he’s so good at debunking false claims of the paranormal. Which is something she can normally appreciate, given how she often can’t see past the spooks to notice the wire running at the top of the frame or the strategically-placed mirrors. But right now, his ability isn’t really working in her favor. 

It also doesn’t help her case when, instead of expounding on the subject of her sleepless night, she sucks back another mouthful of legalized battery acid. Although she can see he wants to say something in response, all she gets is an eye roll and a sigh. 

“Hey, you that reporter lady?” a voice calls out, popping their bubble of solitude. 

They both turn to see two young men approaching their car, one smacking a pack of cigarettes and the other hauling a twenty-four pack. The fact that it’s not yet nine in the morning doesn’t seem to bother the latter, who tugs a can from the case and pops the tab as they come to a stop on the pavement. 

“I am.” Alex motions to them with her energy drink. “Are you two from around here?” 

“Yeap,” Natural Light replies. 

“We seen you down at Dandey’s last night, askin’ question and stuff.” The other man tips a cigarette out and slides a lighter from his pocket. “You figure out the mystery yet?”

Strand straightens up and crosses his arms, no doubt preparing himself for a speech to piss them off and get rid of them. Alex shifts her gaze between the two strangers as they chuckle at her expense, deciding which one to go for. Given that the smoker seems to be the more talkative one, she shifts to face him fully. 

“No, not yet. But since you two are from here, maybe you can tell me where to find Bobby Fontaine?” 

At the name, their laughter peters out and scowls replace their smarmy grins. 

“Nah, we don’t,” says Natural Light. 

“You might want to reconsider lookin’ him up,” the smoker says.

“Why’s that?” 

“People say his folks come from one of those snake handlin’ churches up in the boonies,” he explains, ignoring the look from his companion as he continues. Alex doesn’t point out that ‘the boonies’ could describe their current location. “They speak in tongues and shit.” 

“Glossolalia.” The three of them look to Strand, who lifts a brow at their sudden attention. “The proper terminology for the phenomenon.” 

The two locals eye him up before they focus back on Alex. 

“We don’t fuck with him. He’s a nutcase and a half; talks about how he thinks that the next one’ll tear up eighty-one and all the Nascar folks’ll come down through here and how he could put up a theme park around it--”

“Around the sinkhole?” Strand interjects. 

The smoker nods, shrugging his shoulders as he takes a drag. “Yeah, like he’s gonna fuckin’ build Dollywood or some shit. I told you, he’s crazy. He sits there on the side of the road every day and sells junk and rants at anybody that’ll listen about his theories about a curse and the devil.”

Alex tips her head to the side with interest. 

“And what road might that be?”

\-----

Back along State Route 16, they pass by the turn-off for the sheriff’s station and keep north. 

They pass more sagging homes, more aging farm equipment, more open fields dotted with deer as they graze. They go so far that Alex begins to suspect that she’s been played for a fool and sent on a wild goose chase, which will end with no goose and her being extremely pissed-off for falling--

“I think we found your guy,” Strand says, pulling her out of her thoughts. 

Ahead on the left is a gas station, the blue-and-white building blackened by age and mold. The logo is long gone, along with most of the letters on the message board. Chunks of metal are missing from the canopy; some pieces hang down like gaunt, rusted curtains. A wooden sign staked into the weed-choked asphalt reads: _FOR LEASE_.

Underneath it all, apparently uncaring of the rickety state of the building, is a man. He gives them a wave as they pull into the lot. Kicked back in a lawn chair, he sits next to the bed of his pickup. Stickers adorn the rear window: the yellow Gadsden flag with its rattlesnake, Calvin pissing on the Ford logo, and _EAT SLEEP HUNT_ in camouflage-colored lettering. The tailgate is down, revealing stacks of shirts and ornaments. Milk crates surround him, stuffed with plastic toys and dusty antiques. Hooked to makeshift poles, American, Confederate, and Virginia Tech flags wave in the harsh wind coming down off the mountain. Dark blue flags take up another pole, their seals depicting a Roman woman standing over a man, a long spear in her hand. Underneath the image, a banner reads: _Sic Semper Tyrannis_.

Exiting the car, Strand casts an eye across the parking lot to the towering forest of kudzu vines that looms at the asphalt’s edge. Alex follows his line of sight to the thick wall of foliage, where winter lingers in the brown curls. A cold wind catches the vines, making them rattle and shake. The rustling noise gives her an uneasy feeling that she blames on the possibility of rain. 

“Mornin’!” the man calls over to them as they approach. “You must be Alex Reagan.” 

“That’s me,” she nods, motioning over to Strand and introducing him. This close, she can read the T-shirts, which feature phrases like: _I survived the crack!_ and _My wife went to Virginia’s Ass Crack and all I got was this lousy T-shirt (and a funeral to pay for)_.

They are one-of-a-kind, she’ll give him that.

Bobby leans up to shake their hands and grins up at Alex. “They said you were a famous reporter from up north. Is that true? You ever meet Tucker Carlson?”

She resists the urge to sigh and instead pulls out her recorder. He immediately agrees to an interview and straightens up in his chair. Before he can launch farther into his own personal history, she herds him towards the topic at hand. 

“I’ve spoken with several people in town, but none of them really wanted to talk with me about the crack. Why do you think that is?” 

Picking at the corner of his lip, Bobby chuckles. “They call it the Nuisance, ya know, but only ‘cause they’re afraid of it. They ain’t connected to it like they should be. They don’t respect it for what it is.” 

“Which is?” she prompts, trying her best to shield the wind from the recorder. Above their heads, the hanging strips screech as they sway.

“Well, see, now -- Bristol has got the NASCAR, but folks don’t wanna drive eighty miles to stay up here for it. They’ll go as far as Chilhowie or Marion, but none further. So, we’ve got to make do with what the Lord has given us.”

“A ten-mile-long crack in the earth,” Strand interjects. 

“Yes, sir,” Bobby nods. “If we didn’t have it, people ‘round here would be out of a job. This town would be up shit’s creek with no paddle _and_ no boat. When it goes away, this town practically dies. We don’t have the hoity-toity folks from up north coming to the Smokies to fuel us, not any more. They don’t even pass through here -- they come down eighty-one through Roanoke. We might be lucky to get a stray thru-hiker coming down off the Appalachian Trail to load up for supplies, or somebody who was heading for the highway and made a wrong turn. So we’ve got to use this sinkhole, as damn annoying as it is, for something good.” 

“What about the homes it destroys when it appears?”

He frowns, shrugging as he does so. “Just like living down in Florida, I s’pose. They get hit with hurricanes every year, but they continue to go back and rebuild again and again.”

“In regards to the numbers of deaths, why do you think there’s been so little done to prevent them?” 

“I’d tell you to ask that new mayor of ours,” he says with a smirk, “but word is you already have. That little rat don’t care about none of us. Hell, he probably considers it the cullin’ of the herd, if a few undesirables end up gone because of it. Probably thinks that less people to vote for someone else in the next election, wouldn’t ya say?”

Alex hums, trying to keep her opinion out of the matter (though she does find herself agreeing to the possibility, having met the ‘little rat’). 

“A few people I’ve spoken with have different beliefs on why the deaths occur in the first place. Do _you_ have an explanation for them?” 

At her question, he chuckles, dry and humorless. “I assume you’re not talking about the accidental ones, are you?” 

“You’re saying some of the deaths aren’t accidental?”

“Most people don’t come ‘cause of the crack itself. It ain’t the exciting part. They come for the danger of it, ya know. They think they’re man enough to stand next to it and resist jumping in.” At the questioning look on her face, Bobby continues. “And they come for the legend that surrounds it. Some believe that when the town was founded, the settlers disturbed an ancient Indian burial ground, and that those spirits didn’t take too kindly to being uprooted like that.” 

He’s the second person to hold that belief, the first being Henry Kershaw and his idea that water disturbs the graves of the local indigenous people. Alex wonders if the only explanations she’s going to get are offensive ones. “See, what the spirits do is they-- aw, shit.” 

From up above, what sounds like a thundering herd tramples across the canopy. Beyond their cover, rain drenches the pavement and the trees, turning the landscape dark and slick. A fog rolled in while they were talking; it obscures the nearby hills until only the bristled treetops are visible, peeking up out of the gray. Wind pushes at the rain, sending thick sheets of it towards them. Alex scurries back; Strand follows and hovers in front of her, as if his height is enough to shield her. 

Bobby curses as he shoves his wares up into the pickup’s bed, throwing a tarp over them and tossing a few cinder blocks in to hold it down. 

“We’ll finish our chat some other time, Miz Reagan!” he calls out as he slams the tailgate shut and hauls himself up behind the wheel. “If the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise!”

\-----

By the time Alex and Strand make it back into town proper, the rain is on its way out, leaving behind a lingering fog and several muddy dips in Dandey’s gravel lot. 

Their clothes aren’t completely soaked-through, and it’s closer to everything -- if the two other open businesses and one intersection can be referred to as ‘everything’ -- than their B&B, which will make it easier to head out after food. She says as much to Strand, ignoring his patented look at her need to narrate their plans for the recorder that’s blinking between them on the table.

“And where are you hoping to go?” he questions as he peruses the lunch menu. 

The light catches at the smudged spots on his glasses where he ineffectively wiped them with a napkin. Reaching into her bag, she pulls out the lens cleaning cloth she keeps for her camera and holds out her hand, looking pointedly at his glasses until he hands them off. Alex hums as she rubs the cloth over the lenses, debating on how to answer the question. 

“I have no idea.” 

Her admission gets a chuckle out of him. She decides that he does not look endearing -- not even a little bit -- with his half-smile and scrunched expression where he squints at the menu. 

“Here.” She leans across the table to slip his glasses back over his ears. He reaches up to fix them, a reflexive gesture, and their fingers brush, warm against cold. Strand’s eyebrows pinch down as he reaches for the jacket draped over his chair. 

“Your hands are freezing--”

“Richard, I’m--”

“I believe I have a pair of gloves in my--”

“Miss Reagan.” 

The sudden intrusion stops their pseudo-argument. They both look up to see CC standing at their table, his arms crossed over his baggy uniform. 

“Good morning, Deputy Clinkenbeard,” she returns. “What can I help you with?” 

“You’re a smart woman. I think you can prolly figure that out on your own, now, can’tcha?” 

Alex hums, biting at her lip as she makes a show of glancing down at her menu. “I’m not a local, but I’d go with the chicken salad sandwich.” 

The sigh that escapes him almost rivals that of Strand’s when he’s about to walk out of the recording booth.

“You should know that gossip travels faster than lightning in this town. Which is how I know that you chatted with Bobby Fontaine for eight minutes this morning, well after I warned you about him last night.” 

“I would love to be part of this gossip mill if information spreads that quickly.” As she talks, she makes a pointed glance up to the kitchen window, where Joy’s mother watches their exchange with a sour expression. Although CC doesn’t turn around, he relaxes enough to tuck his hands into his jacket pockets. 

“Don’t mind Miss Dandey. If you’d been around as long as she has, you wouldn’t want an outsider coming in here and digging up all the tragedies this town has suffered.” 

“I’m not here to turn your town into a media circus,” she protests, “but I can also see where a story needs to be told. You all must want to know the reason behind these strange deaths.”

He sighs, leaning closer and lowering his voice. “I get where you’re comin’ from, but a lotta people here don’t wanna draw attention to it.”

“They’re scared,” Strand surmises. “And right now, they all have their preferred theories on what causes the deaths. If you were to pinpoint an exact reason, and it’s not something they could control, then you’ve taken away their safety blanket of denialism.” 

Outside the window, a young family exits their car; the dad bounces a fussy toddler in his arms while two older children race towards the diner. They barrel through the door and into a corner booth, giggling as their dad reminds them about manners. 

“Some would ask why the town hasn’t been abandoned now, after decades of dealing with the tragedies and financial strain of the sinkhole.”

“It seems like the best idea, doesn’t it?” CC shrugs. “It’s like when you watch those scary movies of a family in a big haunted house. You yell at ‘em, tell ‘em to just pack up and move, leave all their shit behind and go. But it ain’t that simple. If we all up and left, then who would be here to stop people from jumping?” 

The sound of someone clearing their throat breaks up their conversation, just in time for Joy to swoop in with a coffee pot.

“Y’all keep your voices down,” she warns as she pours them a cup each. “Momma’s got ears like a damn bat. Last time someone came poking around for a story, she had the dish boy key up their car.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember that. ‘If you write it, they will die,’ or somethin’ like that.” 

“We’ve got rental insurance,” Strand says with a shrug.

“If we can’t speak here, then do you have anyone else you wouldn’t like me to interview?” Alex asks, grinning when CC rolls his eyes. 

“Have you told them about the weird lights, the ones up in the park?” 

“Now why would you go and tell--”

Joy flaps a hand at him, silencing his complaint. “If you didn’t want folks talking about it, then you shouldn’t have blabbed about it out front of the diner last night. Tell them.” 

With that, she takes their orders and disappears back into the kitchen, where they can all hear her mother arguing with her in a low, raspy tone. 

“Is this a Hoia Baciu forest scenario?” Strand asks as he stirs an ungodly amount of sugar into his coffee that Alex can’t help but wince at. “People see the distant lights of the town or radio towers and claim they’re supernatural?” 

“Maybe that’s all they are,” CC concedes. “But we only started getting the calls recently -- if they was far-away lights, they shoulda been noticed back in winter, when they’d’ve been easier to spot with the dead trees and all, even if it is inside the park.” 

“Why are people calling about them, though? I expect locals are used to seeing hunters or hikers out with their flashlights.”

Feigning an interest towards the empty bar, CC checks for any interested ears before edging closer to the table and dropping his voice. 

“Only hunters out right now are for groundhogs, and best time of day for them is mid-morning. And besides, they ain’t flashlights. It’s fires -- like old-fashioned torches. People swear they see them floatin’ through the trees or formed in a circle. There’s a rumor that’s persisted o’er the years that there’s a coven that lives out there in the park, that maybe they’ve got something to do with the Nuisance appearing.” 

Two pairs of eyebrows lift in tandem at that. Strand hums, as if in interest at the claim, but his gaze is on Alex. She knows that he’s thinking of the Brothers of the Mount and their illegal residential choice, just as she is. 

“I assume the rangers would have found evidence of an entire group of people living inside the park,” Alex points out. 

A quick grin flashes across CC’s face. “Oh, well, yeah, ‘course -- I’m just telling you what I heard. I’d normally be telling you not to go out there, but seeing as you aren’t the best at following advice, I figure I’ll be one step ahead. Make sure you bring some decent hiking shoes.”

“I’m not sure if we’ll be doing any outdoor activities today.” A light drizzle speckles against the window. 

Leaning over the table’s edge to peer out, CC takes an assessing look at the clouds. “Trust me, it’ll let up by noon. Don’t stay out too late, though, ‘cause the rain’ll be back by nightfall. And pack some flashlights just in case -- don’t want y’all out there in the dark.”

“Because of the mysterious fire-wielding cult?” Sarcasm tinges Strand’s question. 

CC chuckles and shakes his head. “Nah, just don’t wanna deal with finding you two when you get lost.”

Before Alex can point out that she’s spent a fair share of her time in the wilds of Rainier (or, well, she did -- before the man opposite her finally returned her eleventh call), Joy appears again to set down their plates. 

“Oh, and has he told you about the witch?”

“Joy O’Connor,” CC hisses, “I swear on everything that is--”

\-----

Someone actually did tell her about the witch.

The disgruntled gas station clerk, while avoiding her other questions, told her about a Salem-descendant that lived down in Reeces Chapel, about thirty minutes south of town. To that, Alex pointed out that none of the victims of the Salem witch trials were actual witches. The clerk’s frown defied the laws of physics by deepening even further. So, she paid for her items and left, figuring the ‘witch’ was another tactic to get her to leave than reality. 

The front facade of _Oddities_ is painted a soft shade of pink. The window casings are a light blue -- a color that appears again on the porch ceiling, decorated here and there with spiderwebs and water damage. A single car sits in the parking lot, a white decal on the back window reading: _My other ride is a broom!_

An old-fashioned bell jingles above their heads as Alex enters, Strand following close behind. Tall oak bookcases line the tiny space, filled with glass bowls of crystals; rows of pillar candles; and tiny, corked bottles of herbs. Painted tapestries take up most of the back wall, bright mandalas hanging next to inked tarot cards. Gossamer bolts of fabric drape across the various pieces of furniture, stitched with golden thread that glitters from the Tiffany lamp in the corner. Beside the front counter, pendulums and other handmade jewelry sway gently from the branches of a copper tree sculpture -- moving not by magic, but by a vintage desk fan. From the speakers mounted high in the corners comes Enya, singing softly about waiting for a sign. 

Anne Faulks is a stout woman, her dark hair shot through with frizzled strands of gray. The wrap skirt she wears is decorated with tiny stars, most now missing the foil that once coated them. Draped over her chair is a sheer cardigan, jewel-toned and lined with emerald sequins. It’s what she must have discarded in favor of something warmer, Alex guesses, as Anne pushes the sleeves up on the _Explore the Florida Keys_ sweatshirt she wears. She leads them into the back room, where a small kitchen contains a few armchairs and an old fridge. Wood crackles in a potbelly stove, warming the space to an uncomfortable temperature. 

“You know, I was talking to my daughter yesterday and she mentioned that someone had come down to ask about the Nuisance.” Anne bustles around the small space, setting a kettle on the stove to heat and dragging a few tin canisters out of a sideboard. “You might be the first in a long time that’s stuck it out for this long.” 

Strand emits a soft snort. “We’ve only been here for a day.”

“And I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult, to be honest,” Alex says.

Anne chuckles at them both, sprinkling an array of dried herbs into a strainer and listing the ingredients off as she does. 

“This is a personal favorite of mine; the marigold gives it a bitter taste, but it’s mellowed out by the lavender and ginkgo. The contrasting qualities blend together well, but there’s enough of each distinct flavor that it helps clear your mind.” Turning from the table, she points a finger at Strand. “You may want to avoid it, though -- ginkgo can react with blood thinners.” 

“I’m not taking a blood thinner.” 

“You’re right. You either haven’t filled the prescription because you don’t want to, or you haven’t found the time.”

“Right,” Strand scoffs.

“It’s what killed your grandpa, or so he says.” Anne flicks a hand up to the space beyond his shoulder. She watches the open air there for a moment before she smiles, as if someone just told her a joke. “Your grandma says it was all the shoofly pie.” 

Shifting to sit closer on the chair’s edge, Strand sighs. It’s his universal signal that he’s about to get up and walk out. Alex learned early on to either give him something enticing to make him stay, or to put a hand on his arm and ease him down from his irritation. She considers herself a master of the art of keeping him from looking like an ass, if only to keep their interviewees from clamming up around his bad attitude. 

So, really, it’s ingrained in her to reach across the gap between their chairs. The gray cable-knit sweater he wears is soft, warmed from his body heat; the muscles of his forearm tense and release under her touch. Strand’s gaze darts down to her hand and then up to her face, an unreadable expression on his own. She gives him a pointed look right back, emphasizing her wordless demand with a hiked brow -- which he does frown at, but at least he does so while settling back into his chair.

The kettle releases a piercing cry and they jump apart at the sudden noise, their connection broken. Anne pours hot water into the waiting teapot. A strong aroma fills the room, earthy and sickly-sweet, as steam rises and coats her glasses. 

“So, you’re a medium?” Alex asks.

“Of sorts,” Anne replies, tipping her head from side to side. “I can only hear the loud ones. And,” she says to Strand as she passes him a cup, “with your folks being from up north, they’re plenty loud.”

“So we’ve resorted to stereotypes,” he mutters. Handing a cup off to Alex, he takes his own and cradles it between his hands for warmth. “Wonderful.”

The first sip is a test of her gag reflex. She struggles to keep the liquid in her mouth and not across the linoleum floor. The taste is like a paradox of flavors, somehow all of them foul. Trying to keep her expression neutral (as if she hadn’t just licked the floor of an abandoned greenhouse), she glances over to ensure Strand isn’t making a scene, only to find that he’s taking another sip of his own free will. By the curious look on his face, he’s seemingly enjoying the concoction. 

“The tea idn’t for everybody.” Anne giggles as she says it, though, which helps Alex relax enough to return the cup, saving her from having to take another drink. “Now, what questions have you got for me, hmm?” 

\-----

They make it six minutes before Strand caves. 

If she’s honest, Alex is surprised that he could stand to wait this long. She was a bit taken aback, too, when they were bundling into their jackets, the interview complete -- in which Anne held a firm stance that the mines and their methane gases were to blame for the crack and subsequent deaths -- and she asked Alex to stay behind for a moment. Strand stood there, lingering in the threshold, looking affronted at the idea of wasting another minute in a so-called psychic’s space. 

“No, you can go.” Anne made a shooing motion with her hands. “You’re full of nothing but noise, and I need it quiet. Go on out to the car. She won’t be more than five minutes.” 

Alex nodded at Strand’s reluctance, assuring him with a quick smile that he stayed to watch fade away. Then he was gone, taking the keys and his supposed loudness with him.

Anne didn’t move until the bell clanged, signaling his departure. The first thing she did was heave out a sigh of relief. 

“I’m sorry, sweetie, but he is just so gosh-darn loud. His head is just like,” she raised her hands and shook them around her head, “like a swarm of yella jackets, working a mile a minute. Makes it hard to concentrate.” 

Pulling a pretty, wooden box off the sideboard, Anne unlatched it and retrieved a stack of tarot cards. “I should apologize, but my fingers have been itching the past half-hour. These cards have been a hot poker in my side ever since you walked through that door. I think they got to tell you something.” 

Returning to her seat, Alex watched as Anne shuffled the stack like one would for a game of poker. After cutting the deck, she fanned out the cards and instructed Alex to pick out three from the spread.

“I like pulling three when the situation calls for it. It’s kinda like an instant message from the cards,” she explained as she flipped them over one-by-one. 

Alex had researched tarot cards for the first episode; she’d reached out to several popular YouTube channels and had perused a local metaphysical shop. But that didn’t mean she knew what to think when the first card revealed itself to be the Ten of Swords. It hadn’t brought her the greatest feeling in the world, given the image was a man lying face-down with ten swords sticking out of his back. 

“Hmm,” was all Anne said at first. She ran her fingers over the image and watched Alex for a moment before nodding. “This symbolizes your current situation, and right now, it tells me that you’re going to suffer an unwelcome surprise in the near future. Or... possibly an ending of sorts.”

“An ending?” Alex questioned, telling herself that it was more for the audience than her own interest. 

Tipping her head side to side, Anne hummed as if deciding how to explain. 

“To the average person, it could mean a relationship or a job or a goal. I think, in your case, it means that whatever journey you’re on now is gonna come to a sudden stop.” 

Anne tapped a finger against the next card. “The Moon, facing how it is, tells me that things are not as they appear to be. The Moon is your challenge -- it’s the driving force that’s _causing_ your current situation. It’s like whatever it is… is hiding behind a curtain. Whatever you’re close to, it’s dark.” 

The shadows in Sebastian Torres’s photos sprang to mind; the same figures that appeared in Strand’s wedding photos and the same ones he saw as a child, but then claimed he hadn’t. Anne’s gaze caught hers and held her there, pinning her in the chair. “Things are not as they appear to be. I’d reckon you need to be careful where you tread.” 

A loud crack sounded from the stove, a log splitting apart under the heat of the coals. Alex didn’t jump, but it was a near thing. Outside the window, the sun was beginning to peek through the late morning gloom. It felt like a paradox, watching the light illuminate the distant mountains as the shadows grew longer inside the cramped kitchen. 

Anne flipped the final card over. Death grinned at her from below their visor. From her limited research, Alex knew that Death didn’t take itself literally. People receiving readings often freaked out, thinking it was an omen of their impending demise. Or so she kept repeating to herself as Anne studied her, her long fingers making circles over the black flag Death carried.

“This card idn’t anything to be afraid of, but I’m glad you’re putting on a brave face. Here, Death wants to be your guidance. There’s something you’re resistant to that you need to take a leap of faith on.” 

“Like what?” Alex asked. 

Anne shrugged. “I’m not really sure. Might have something to do with your clairaudience.” 

“I’m sorry?”

She paused to hold Alex’s gaze for a moment. “You know you’re psychically sensitive, right?” 

“Um, no, sorry. I don’t think--”

“Sweetie, I could tell when you walked in. You don’t have a trained ear by any stretch, but it’s there.” She tapped a finger to her own temple. “You probably only hear them at night, when you’re trying to relax before bed. They might even be the reason you’ve got such bad insomnia. And maybe that’s what the cards want you to work at, so you can strengthen your ability, and tune the voices out when you need to concentrate or go to sleep.” 

For several, long seconds that felt like whole minutes, Alex stared at the woman across from her, wary and unnerved. The noises and whispers from the dark corners of her apartment -- she’d chalked them up to her lack of sleep, or possible sleep paralysis, or the last figments of a dream that played right on the edge of awakening. 

“Right now,” Anne continued, “you’ve got your ear to the earth, so to speak. If you work at it, you could really put it to good use.” 

The scoff that Strand produces in response to Alex’s recount of her reading could be heard round the world, she’s sure. It’s certainly loud enough that she knows she’ll have to lower it in post.

“What, as if all of humanity doesn’t talk enough on Twitter and Snatch Chat?” 

“I think you mean--”

He cuts her off with a rough sigh, waving his hand as if to encourage her to move past his pop culture flub. “You can’t hear ghosts any more than I can see them in the shitty home movies people send us.”

Her first thought is: _Strand must be decently pissed-off if his normal Princeton Review level of adjectives have been reduced to swear words_ . That thought is quickly followed by another, far more private thought about the warmth she feels in her chest at the use of _us_ , at the subtle assurance that this investigation is a joint effort. It’s the same feeling she gets when the afternoon turns to evening and she can measure it not by the length of the shadows, but by the slow, measured shifts of Strand as he starts on the other end of the sofa and ends seated next to her, his thigh pressed against hers. 

She keeps both thoughts to herself. 

“A deck of cards can no more predict your future than the stars in the sky that have burned for a millenia and are uncaring of the planets and their organisms’ belief that, because I was born on November 21, I’m a Scorpio and because of this label I have to be passionate and ambitious and jealous, which could describe everyone to a certain degree, and because it bottles down the human experience to a few--”

“Richard,” she tries again for the second time. 

He does stop talking, but she knows that it’s only because he’s run out of breath, and not because she interrupted. Despite his worked-up state, he keeps the car steady as they wind down around a sharp curve. 

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” he tells her, glancing up from the road to catch her eye for a long second. “Not because a deck of cards said so, or for any other reason.” 

Up ahead, the trees break apart just long enough for a brief glimpse of the valley. The drab brown of winter and the bright green of spring weave together across the landscape. Sunlight splinters off the blue-green water of Unicoi Lake where it wraps around the mountain. 

“One prediction did come true: CC was right. The sun is back out.” 

Strand lets out a long exhale, his hands loosening their tight grip on the steering wheel as he nods in agreement. 

“Looks like decent hiking weather to me.”

\-----

There are a decent amount of cars in the semicircle lot of Unicoi Mountain State Park, despite the wet ground.

Down from the bathrooms is a scattered assortment of charcoal grills and picnic tables, some of which are already occupied with families trying to make the most of their Saturday. Underneath a makeshift pergola, a couple argues over a trail on the park map. Their kids shove gravel into their tiny backpacks, oohing and aahing at the rocks. Yellow signs are stapled to the wooden posts, warning hikers of approaching the sinkhole. Stepping around the young geologists, Alex locates the highlighted area of the mile-long damage that has torn through the park’s southern section and closed the Angler trail. 

Far down towards the more deserted end of the parking lot and tucked behind a grove of spruce trees is the trailhead. Yellow caution tape cinches tight around the bark of two trees, blocking off the entrance. 

Alex gives a cursory look around, but all the other park-goers are at the other end with their hot dogs and their March Madness arguments. The little family disappears down the overlook trail towards the east. The only noises she can hear are the bird calls and the rustle of squirrels as they leap from branch to branch. 

Well, those, and Strand’s heavy sigh of disapproval. 

Alex glances back at him and frowns at his reluctance. He frowns back, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. She knows that’s mostly from the new boots he’s wearing that he didn’t bother breaking in like she told him to last night. 

“We did get permission from the sheriff’s department to go out here.” 

“I’m sure the park rangers will care about that when they’re hoisting us out of the sinkhole after we carelessly stumble into it because we ignored park regulations.” 

“I packed a guidebook. And rope.” He levels a look at her. “Okay, I didn’t bring rope,” she admits. “I thought about it, and then decided the camera was more important.”

“As always, I am unsurprised by your foolish dedication to journalism over personal safety.” 

“We agreed to let that subject drop,” she reminds him, feigning interest in the backpack’s adjustable straps to avoid his scowl. 

“I didn’t agree to anything. We discussed your previously-mentioned penchant for throwing caution to the wind, you stormed out of my house--”

“--and then I came back. _With_ apology eggrolls.” 

Strand pauses from adjusting the laces on his boots, the scowl lifting slightly at the corners to where it almost resembles a smile. It’s fleeting, there and then gone when he dips his head back down to tie a neat bow, but Alex has trained herself over the years to spot faults in the crust that is Richard Strand’s stoic personality. Above them, perched low in a hickory tree’s branches, a wood thrush calls out, its flute-like song carrying into the forest. From somewhere deeper inside the woods, a crow returns with a trio of dry caws. 

Alex ducks under the yellow tape and turns, holding it down for him to step over. 

“Okay,” he sighs, watching the tape spring back into place behind them. “Lead on.”

The local hiking guide that Alex consulted on the drive down rated the trail as moderate. Her body is begging to differ by the second mile. Thick ropes of tree roots run across the ground, making it hard to keep an eye on the surrounding wilderness with such a high risk of a twisted ankle. Rhododendron creeps over and onto the path, allowed to run wild from the lack of foot traffic over the past month, forcing them to push through glossy-leafed curtains. Hobblebush and wood ferns form a dense undergrowth that hides the squirrels and other small creatures they can hear skittering about. The trail itself can’t decide whether it wants to be steep or even, alternating between the two extremes as they venture deeper into the forest.

They descend down a steep grade into another small valley when more caution tape appears. Most of it lies on the ground, a neon-yellow snake curling its way through the dirt. Twenty feet beyond, the crack has devoured a path through the trees as it heads north towards town. A hundred feet to the south, it reaches its end against the mountainside, where wet shale and bedrock glint in the feeble sunlight. Rocks and roots create a tangled mess at the bottom; a deer stares up at them with hollow eyes, ensnared by the detritus, its body a feasting ground for carrion beetles. Masked earlier by syrupy pine sap and the dampened iron of a recent rain, the smell of death comes crawling out of the hole and lingers like a fog. 

Strand is making a tasteless remark about how animals shouldn’t be included in the death count when Alex notices a glimmer far off in the distance. 

“Do you want to get any more photos of th-- wait, where are you going?” 

Turning from the sinkhole, he follows her along its edge and then up the steep mountainside, where the only thing keeping them from a quick descent down is the tree trunks they cling to as they make their way across. 

“Alex,” he hisses, “do you mind explaining,” he pauses to shove himself off a tree and grabs another one, trying to keep his balance as wet leaves slide under his feet, “what on earth you’re doing?” 

“I saw a light.” 

She glances back with concern at a noise he makes, but he crosses the fallen tree without any need to jump, an easy feat with those long legs of his. 

“Oh, yes, of course. A perfectly valid reason to climb around on the unstable ground surrounding a sinkhole.” 

Ignoring his grumbling, Alex reaches the even floor of the forest once more and treks through the undergrowth, shoving budding plant life and gnarled thickets aside. All at once, the sun sinks deeper into the cloud cover and the woods go dim, everything thrown into shadows. 

Nestled back in a clearing is a cabin. It’s small, almost as small as the one in Portola State Park where they found Sebastian. The roof is a mismatched patchwork of tin, each strip rusted to varying degrees. A porch sags off the front, the steps replaced with two planks of plywood that rattle underfoot when Alex approaches the window. Peeking inside, she can only see the dark outline of a stone fireplace and a pile of moss-covered logs. 

“I think this is trespassing,” Strand says from where he’s followed her up, frowning at the creaking wood under their feet. 

“Then we might as well do it properly.” 

She looks to the door that someone might have called sturdy three decades ago, and then back to him. He hikes up a dark eyebrow at her, to which she shrugs; he sighs. It’s not his _I’m-fed-up-with-your-so-called-journalistic-endeavours_ sigh, but rather his _I-will-let-you-know-at-a-later-date-that-I-immensely-regret-this-agreement_ sigh. Which boils down to her stepping aside so he can go in first, as if he can protect her from whatever may go bump in the night inside. Alex leaves the door open for a quick escape, in case any ghosts or demons or possums that call this place home decide to protest their invasion. 

It’s a one-room cabin with three windows, only one of which is intact. Aside from the dilapidated fireplace, the place is devoid of any comforts. A rusted folding chair sits in one corner, a stagnant puddle of water on the seat. A piece of plywood and two cinder blocks form a makeshift table, on top of which sits a crushed beer can and _The Virginia Sportsman_ magazine, open to an article on tips for hunting deer. The smell of wood-rot and mildew permeates the air. 

“I think it’s safe to say that no one calls this place home,” she mutters, loud enough for the recorder to catch, as she flips the magazine closed. 

Leaning down over the table, Strand inspects the cover. “This is from last fall. So, someone was here at least six months ago.” 

Alex’s stomach does a funny thing at the realization; she berates herself for being so gung-ho about busting in and checking out the place, given that it looked like no one had stepped inside since the first Bush presidency. She goes over to the back window and gazes out, unable to shake the sudden, intimate feeling of being watched. Back between the trees, a deer moves slowly, sniffing at the banks of a small creek. 

The moment is broken when the deer perks up, her ears flicking back and forth. Then she’s gone, bounding through the trees, her white tail bobbing behind her as she disappears into the underbrush. 

“Something’s coming.” Strand says it in that odd tone of his, the one he gets sometimes when he’s more sure of what he’s saying than he is of the laws that preside over all of existence. At least, that’s how Alex interprets the tone. 

“Something or someone?” she asks, frozen in place, afraid that the creaky floor will give away her existence. Never mind that they stomped their way over here and knocked about the place; now if she so much breathes in too deeply, she might be heard. Panic will do that, she supposes. 

He hesitates, cocking his head as he listens, then: “Someone.” 

“I’m not sure why I expected that to make me feel better.” She laughs to release some of the anxiety that’s building up in her chest, watching the trees for movement. “A moose doesn’t care if I’m breaking laws.”

“There aren’t any moose around here.” He’s much calmer than her, taking her by the arm and leading her over to the space behind the door. Crouching down next to her, he keeps an eye on the far window. 

“Now’s not really the time for semantics.” 

“I beg to differ. I’ve made a whole career out of it.” 

Before she can make another rebuttal, he puts a finger to his lips. She can hear it, now: the methodical shuffling of shoes against the forest floor, leaves and rocks crunching under heavy soles. The sound is distant, but unmistakable -- especially when the sound grows louder, close enough that she expects to hear footsteps on the porch, a voice to call out to them about being on private property. Shelving aside the panic, she forms her argument in her head (they are on state land, after all, and there were no signs around the cabin that discouraged trespassing) as they wait for their mystery guest to announce their presence. 

Whoever is out there, though, continues their sweep around the cabin, their steps measured and even. Alex tries to stretch up to look out the back windows, but Strand yanks her back down and presses his lips up against her ear. She blames the shiver that runs through her on the situation at hand. 

“I have a feeling the locals are a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ kind,” he whispers, so low that the recorder in her hand will barely catch his words. 

The footsteps stop. The sudden lack of noise has them holding their breath, waiting. According to the recorder, a minute passes, but it feels like three or four lifetimes to Alex and her racing heart. Whoever is out there -- it’s obvious now that they’re not here to order them out or ask them to leave. She feels like an animal snared in a trap, waiting to be put out of its misery. 

Then: more footsteps, sounding closer than before. She doesn’t jump, but it’s a near thing. The aborted movement is enough for Strand to settle a hand on hers and squeeze tight. 

The plywood step bounces under an unseen weight; Alex shifts to confront but Strand’s faster than she gives him credit for, whipping an arm out to keep her down behind the door. Whoever it is, they’re standing just beyond the doorway.

The plywood bounces again. This time, the steps trample across the ground and away, fading as the noises of the forest seem to rush back all at once. 

Ignoring the hiss of her name, Alex slips out and darts around the open door. Scanning the trees, she draws up short when there’s no retreating figure to be seen. The wind makes it difficult to see farther out, given how it makes the low-lying branches swing and the shrubs rustle, tricking her into looking here and there. 

“It was probably a park ranger checking the area out,” Strand suggests as he joins her. 

“Then why didn’t they call out? Why did they circle the place like a vulture and then disappear into thin air?” 

“I’m going to ignore the hyperbole. Just because you didn’t see them leave--”

“You didn’t either,” she rounds on him, jerking a thumb to the open doorway. “They couldn’t have gotten far enough to already be out of sight.”

“They could be hiding.” 

Her stomach turns at that and she resists the urge to check the treeline again. “Then your park ranger argument falls apart.” 

“I said that was a possibility. Another one would be that someone else is toying with us. The whole town probably knew our plans for the day and where we were headed, since we talked about it at the diner. You know how quickly word travels in a small town.” 

The attempt to keep the anxiety off her face must be failing, because he pauses and changes course, his hand coming up to squeeze her shoulder. “Someone just wanted to give the ‘Yankee reporter’ a good scare. That’s all.” 

Gathering up courage that she certainly doesn’t feel, Alex blows out a breath and nods. 

“Sure. Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Statistically, yes.” 

She doesn’t swing her elbow back into his ribs, but it’s a near thing. That warm, half-hearted chuckle of his makes an appearance as he guides her out of the cabin. 

“Come on. If we head back now, we might beat the rain.”

\-----

They do, but only because finding their rental is much easier when their vehicle is the only one in the parking lot. 

The clock on the dash reads four minutes past six, though the thick blanket of clouds makes it seem later. The rain starts as soon as Strand pulls out his phone to guide them back to the B&B. Raindrops thump against the hood and then the roof, turning the world around them into a kaleidoscope of speckled gray until he flicks the wipers on. 

“Just make a left out of here and head north,” Alex suggests when the navigation app continues to throw up poor signal messages. 

“We got turned around at the four-way stop on our way here. I want to make sure we’re going the correct direction before we drive sixty miles out of our way.” Jabbing his thumb on the retry button, he sighs. “This is why I prefer paper maps.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have one, honestly. Didn’t get the chance to request a TripTik?” 

The inevitable, snarky reply doesn’t come. She glances up from her own phone to see Strand squinting out the windshield, his lips twisting into a frown. “What’s…” her words trail off as her eyes register what she’s looking at. 

A light, far off in the distance, but bright enough to be seen through the downpour. It flickers as it moves between the trees. 

The dome light flares to life. Strand grabs at her, trying in vain to keep her inside the car, but she’s quick when she needs to be -- which is why she has her phone out, her recorder tucked away, and her hood up all before the door closes behind her. His voice is muffled through the glass and rain, making it difficult to discern exactly what he’s yelling at her. She doesn’t wait to ask him to repeat himself. Jogging to the trailhead, she reaches the yellow tape in record time and ducks under it, only hesitating long enough to switch on her phone’s flashlight. From behind her, she can hear Strand grumbling as he follows her into the dark. 

The light is still moving, too far to see who might be holding it. 

“It would be difficult for a torch to stay lit with weather like this.” Strand’s caught up with her, then. “They must be using kerosene.” 

“It would have to be bright enough so they could see where they’re going,” she adds. “Because they aren’t on the trail.” 

Instead, the light seems to move parallel with them as they trek deeper and deeper in. The drum of rain drowns out any chance of noise, other than their own grunts and sighs as they slip and slide. Their boots squelch with every step, the path nothing more than muck.

“I’m not sure if we should continue much farther.” 

She glances back to see Strand propping himself up against a tree trunk, his glasses coated with rain. Smears of mud dirty his raincoat and his pants; she isn’t sure if she wants to look down to see the mess she’s made of her own clothes. “We don’t seem to be catching up with them, and I have a notion that we’re more liable to stumble across their Klan meeting than anything supernatural.” 

Her rational side (the one that would desperately love to get out of this rain and into the warm heat of the rental car) agrees with him. But, then again, her rational side wasn’t the one in control when she bolted from the car. 

“Whoever they are, they can’t continue much further without running into the lake.” 

The one that supposedly contained vengeful spirits of a local tribe, hellbent on creating detours and claiming lives. The ignorance of it would be something to mock and laugh at under normal circumstances. But racing through a forest growing darker with each passing minute while chasing down a phantom light as a downpour blocks out any discernible noise isn’t what Alex would consider ‘normal.’ 

If her gaze wasn’t trained on the light already, she wouldn’t have seen it move. But it does, cutting back across the woods in the time it takes her to blink the rain out of her eyes. She stumbles back and collides with Strand, who grabs hold of her arm to steady her. 

“Did you _see_ that?” 

“It -- it could be an insect of some sort--”

“Insects? That’s the best you can come up with?” 

As they argue, the light continues up the hill, winding like a snake, making its way towards them. Alex tamps down on her body’s incessant desire to flee, trying to reason with herself that a weird, free-floating light can’t hurt her.

“Help me!” a voice cries out from the shadows. 

Spinning on her heel, Alex aims her phone down the hill. Looming far below is the sinkhole, too deep for her light to do anything more than shine on its mangled edges. Unease knocks its way up her chest; she knows that they shouldn’t have reached it already, they’ve only been out here for ten minutes at most. In the faint blue light, though, is a sight that rips the thought right out of her head: two small hands clinging to the crack’s edge. 

“Oh, my god!” She rushes down the embankment, ignoring Strand’s shout of alarm behind her. “There’s somebody down there!” 

Her next step pitches her forward and she slides down along the wet leaves. Looping her arm around a tree to stay upright, she spits out a curse as the movement jerks her shoulder back. 

“Alex, stop! What are you--”

“Help! Please!” they shriek, drowning out Strand. “I’m-- I can’t hold on!”

“I’m coming!” Alex calls down to them, keeping her light trained on their hands as she finally reaches level ground and sprints across the forest floor. Rain drenches her face and neck, her hood having slipped off at some point, making it hard to see. Which is why she doesn’t see the root that trips her. She slams down into the mud, struggling to her knees and biting past the pain in her wrists to scramble over to the edge.

“--gonna die!”

Alex reaches over to grab their hands, their skin cold and wet and clammy. The shadows are too thick for her to make out a face in the dark below. “Help!” 

“I’m going to pull you up.” She stretches farther down to get a solid grip around their wrists. The rocky shelf below her chest crumbles at her sudden weight. “But you have to--” 

“Alex, please!” 

“Alex, no!” 

Hands clench around her jacket and drag her back; her grip falters and the hands slip out. Long fingers scrape at the dirt in a desperate attempt for life before they disappear into the black below. The hideous crack of bone meeting rock echoes through the downpour. Alex screams for them, clawing at the arms around her waist they haul her away from the edge. 

“Stop!” Strand forces her down onto the ground. He kneels before her, his hands coming up to frame her face. “Alex, stop! Look at me.” 

“I let go--”

“What the hell is wrong with you? Are you trying to get yourself killed?” 

His eyes are wild as they rove over her, his fingers digging into her rain-matted hair. Her hands come up to grip his wrists, desperate to anchor herself to his form as she sucks in a breath, gathering herself to explain. 

“There’s-- there’s someone down there, Richard, they’re down there and I--”

“Stay here.” 

He leaves her to scan the embankment. The bright beam of his flashlight sweeps over and into the crack. Alex swallows once, then again, waiting for him to find the body. He gives no reaction as he turns and strides back to her. The lines on his face are thrown into sharp relief by the flashlight in his hand. “There’s nobody there.”

She hears the words, but they don’t make any sense. 

“No, I-- they fell, I saw them fall, they-- maybe the rain, maybe there’s--” she watches her hands as she stutters. They keep curling up and releasing, her fingers stiff and coated with mud. 

“There’s nobody down there,” he repeats, crouching down beside her. Reaching out, he takes both of her hands between his and tries to rub some warmth into them. 

“They knew my name.” 

“That was me, trying to stop you from falling in and killing yourself.” 

“No, before. Before you-- they said my name.” 

“Alex,” he tries again, and she hates the look of concern on his face. “There was no one there.”

Swallowing back her argument, she looks away and up to take in their surroundings. 

“The light. It’s gone.” 

Around them, the rain continues its steady rhythm, soaking the ground where they sit. To the west, swatches of orange and red glow through the trees, marbled with the gray rain clouds. 

Strand follows her gaze, watching the tree line for a moment. Then, in true fashion, he sighs as he struggles to stand and reaches down to help her to her feet. 

“Come on.” Wrapping an arm around her waist to keep her steady, he starts for the trail. “Let’s go home.” 

\-----

Home as in the B&B, where owner Corbie Clinkenbeard takes one look at them and their mud-caked clothes and promises that she’ll send dinner up to their rooms tonight, as long as they leave their shoes outside. 

Alex runs the water hot and stands under the spray until her skin feels numb from the heat, working a hand against her sore shoulder. The ancient bathroom fan clanks to life, but can’t do much for the overwhelming amount of steam that wafts into the suite. She manages to crack open a window, throw on leggings and a sweater, and loop her hair into a tangled knot before four knocks sound against her door. 

At her threshold is Strand, carrying a large serving tray that contains two covered dishes, a manila folder, and a pair of socks. His hair is still damp, strands of it falling across his forehead from the lack of fancy product. 

For a brief moment, she considers making a mood-lightening joke about how they should’ve just showered together. As her mind is considering how saying such a stupid, inappropriate thing would go, her imagination springs forth with the image of him in the clawfoot tub in her ensuite. She doesn’t want to consider why her libido would rear its head after chasing down a (possibly) supernatural light in a (probably) haunted forest. 

Doctor Bernier would have a fucking field day with that one. 

Following him across the room, Alex sits down beside him on the loveseat and switches on the small flatscreen in the corner. The news plays a feel-good segment on the local animal shelter as he unveils their dinner: pot roast, mashed potatoes, and a bottle of Syrah. She would go downstairs and kiss Corbie if it didn’t involve a whole flight of stairs. Strand holds out a plate and the pair of socks to her. This close, she can see the Fair Isle pattern at the top, where tiny deer prance between tiny spruce trees.

“Miss Clinkenbeard informed me that it would get cold tonight, and I had an extra pair in my luggage.” 

Alex runs a finger over the whimsical design; they’re thick and soft, probably more expensive than all of her eight-in-a-pack socks combined. She balances the plate on the armrest as she slips them on, laughing a little when they reach almost to her knees. 

“Thanks! I don’t have anything in my suitcase that’s nearly as warm and fuzzy.” 

“They’re not _fuzzy_ , they’re made of genuine, Shetland wool--”

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to show off.”

“--and they’re far more durable than any of your ad-spot perks that you gift off to everyone for Christmas.” 

Her fork, primed with a chunk of roast, pauses in front of her lips. 

“Wow, okay,” she says, narrowing her gaze at him. “I could say the same thing about you and the yearly planners you like to give out.” 

“Those are useful.” 

She chuckles at his rebuttal. “And just happen to be stamped with the Institute’s name across the back? Don’t lie, Ruby buys them in bulk for a discount.” 

His mouth opens to serve her right back, but then redirects his attention to his own plate. Alex lifts an eyebrow at him; he spears a carrot and chews on it. Settling back into her seat, she eats the rest of her dinner as the bumbling news team makes lame jokes about a burglary thwarted by ceramic chickens in Kentucky. When Pat and Vanna appear, they mute the TV to slog through the file of academic and bureaucratic nonsense Strand printed off, sent to him from a contact at Virginia Tech. She lets the recorder run for the hour they work, figuring she can churn out at least a few clips from the info hash. 

“Are we not going to address the elephant in the room?” he asks as they’re stuffing the papers back into their folders. All of those feel-good butterflies in her stomach disappear. She swallows back a mouthful of wine. 

“I wasn’t planning on it.” 

“Alex--”

“I know what I saw -- or, or what I think I saw. Either way, it doesn’t really matter, because no one was there. Just like you said.” 

Expecting the immediate reply of agreement, of being told that she merely gave into her ever-growing lack of critical thinking brought on by apophenia, she’s surprised when Strand stays quiet. He watches her with those careful eyes of his, seeming to think about what he’s going to say -- for possibly one of the first times since she hounded him into that original interview. 

“The mind is susceptible to outside influences. Your brain conjured up someone in need of help, because it makes the most sense.” He tilts his head to the side, as if listening to the idea that’s just popped into his head. “I would like to do a soil sample. We know that the coal mines nearby leak methane into the environment, and with carbon monoxide a by-product of methane, it could stand to reason that the hallucinations come from--”

“But I felt them,” she interjects. “I touched them.” 

“Our brains can sometimes be complex prisons. And hallucinations can sometimes seem… very real.” 

Ignoring the pointed look he gives her, she chooses instead to stand up and cross over to the bay window. The curtains are pulled apart, the window still open from when the shower’s steam hung around the room like a ghost. 

_Ha, good one_ , she tells herself, _just what you don’t need to imagine: ghosts inside your actual room where you plan to sleep_. As if she doesn’t have enough of that issue back at home, which is something else she doesn’t want to think about. 

Beyond a copse of dogwoods, the branches tipped in white petals, and beyond the bright, purple clusters of a redbud, the mountainside dips down to meet the wide valley. Bars of orange light cast through the trees that rise out of the valley’s edge, their trunks disappearing into the approaching dusk. Everything is damp, the tips of leaves glittering gold from the setting sun. 

Pushing down on the window, she realizes two things: a) the window refuses to budge and b) the hot water didn’t heal her injured shoulder as intended. This becomes obvious when pain flares down her back; she hisses out a curse and reaches up to massage the area. 

“Here, let me.” Strand steps up behind her, nudging her hand away to replace it with both of his, fingers sweeping over the area and then compressing lightly into the surrounding tissue. “Is this why it looked like you were trying to open a sauna in here?” 

Not trusting her mouth with what it might say when his hands are performing such magic, Alex nods. “You need ice on this,” he suggests. 

Having spent most of the evening shivering from the rain, she shakes her head. “No, no more cold for me, thanks.” 

He sighs in response, though it fades into a soft chuckle. It’s one of her favorite things to catch while she’s editing through mounds of audio files, that brief respite to her ears that comes in the form of Richard Strand finding her humorous, a small acknowledgement that she can bring a little bit of life to his otherwise manic existence.

“Why did you come with me?” she asks and, because she knows his ways of skirting circles around her questions, she doubles down before he can: “On this trip, I mean.” 

“Because you asked me to.”

She doesn’t twist around to give him a look, but it’s a near thing. 

“I’ve asked you to do plenty of things throughout our partnership, and you have more than proven your ability to say no. So, really, why did you? Because Ruby told me that you had an open spot at a paranormal symposium. But you declined it, even though you love going and berating other experts--”

“So-called experts.”

“ _Richard_.”

“Because I wanted to. Come with you, that is.” She gives him a beat, able to tell from the slow trace of his hands across her shoulders that he’s wearing his considering face right now. “And I admit,” he continues, “I let my apprehension get to me. You don’t have the greatest track record with going off on your own and making sound decisions, despite the label of ‘integrity’ that you proudly claim. And, despite our emails and texts, we both know that those can be faked.” 

She closes her eyes against the image of Keith Dabic’s face stitched onto someone else. 

“And I remember waiting for you at the airport, still worrying despite all the evidence against it, that I’d been… played, and that I’d been talking to someone else all along.” There’s a long pause as his fingers slide along her skin. She waits, trying to be patient as he sorts through his thoughts, knowing that he’s already told her more than he planned. “You are…” he stops, his breath of hesitation drifting down across her neck.

“I’m…?” she prompts. 

“A great deal of things, to both my annoyance and my admiration,” he answers with a non-answer, as he seems to be contractually obligated to do throughout his entire life. “But right now, I’m thinking the word I want to use is tired.” 

The word choice has her blinking slowly, as if to dispel the admission, as if she can rewind and have him choose something else more romantic. She’s not naive -- she’s spotted the gradual increase in his gentle touches and weighted glances throughout the past several months (if not years, though there have been some weeks where those glances were filled with animosity). 

She turns to face him, watching as he struggles with where to put his hands before he decides on crossing them over his chest. 

It would be so easy to reach up and pull him down to her level and end this stalemate that they formed somewhere along the way. Keeping each other in these neatly-defined squares of two people wrapped up in an apocalypse cult, who can do any number of dangerous things like whisking off to Turkey on the advice of a confessed killer or flying off to certain, DNA-assured death in Switzerland, but god forbid they give over to this unnamed, years-spanning attraction to each other. 

And, as if he can read the thoughts spiraling through her head as easily as he could a book, Strand sighs. 

“There’s… we shouldn’t. Cross that line, at least.” 

Alex goes for a smirk, but can tell from the pitied look on his face that it falls short of its mark. 

“You know I’ve never been good at that.” 

“Then,” he pauses to clear his throat. His fingers clench against the fabric of his own shirt. “Then at least let me stay safely inside.” 

“Okay,” she says, hating how small her voice sounds. Embarrassment floods through her. Taking a step back, she pushes her hair back behind one ear. In true fashion, it slips back onto her cheek. “Okay,” she tries a second time. 

Strand reaches for his wine on the windowsill and clutches it in front of him like a shield. 

“I’m sorry.”

She winces at his words. “Don’t -- _please_ don’t apologize. That makes this all so much worse. I should have -- I mean, I shouldn’t have--”

“It’s -- me, I’m -- not that I don’t want--”

“Stop,” she cuts him off and for once, he obeys. “Listen, I -- it’s been a crazy night and we’re both tired, and I shouldn’t have said anything. Though to be fair I didn’t _say_ anything, you just assumed --correctly, I might add -- that I planned on kissing you like I’ve wanted to a hundred other times--”

“Alex--” he tries but she continues, her reddened cheeks and injured pride be damned. 

“No, seriously, knock it off with the apologies.” The chuckle feels like gravel in her throat. She turns away to look at the darkening sky, unable to meet his gaze. “I should’ve known that… that it was always going to be me to make the first move, and it was always going to be you to run away.” 

He sucks in a sharp breath. She winces at her own words, an apology of her own on the tip of her tongue, but there’s a thunk of glass meeting wood before his hand is around her arm, urging her back towards him. 

“You’re--” he starts but doesn’t finish, because he’s too busy pulling her close and dipping his head down and his lips are brushing hers, almost feather-light, as if he still isn’t sure, as if this is a test he doesn’t know the answer to. 

Alex, as always, forges ahead without bothering to read the directions; she reaches up to cradle the back of his neck and pulls him down the rest of the way so she can deepen the kiss. Like a facsimile of a dance, she feels her legs move backwards, one step and then two, until her back meets the window pane. A cool breeze rolls up out of the valley, carrying with it the sweet, syrupy scent of pine. She shivers, despite feeling warm all over from Strand’s arms as he wraps them around her. 

“I’m…?” she repeats, giving them both a chance to breathe. 

“Infuriating.” 

But he says it with a soft smile that she can almost taste when she leans up to kiss him again. It rolls easily between them, like fog off the mountain. 

This is her love language; it’s what lies hidden, tucked away between the dips in the frequency, like a love letter folded up its edges and climbed in to settle amongst all of the gaps in the audio. The reassuring brushes of his hand at her back; the solid weight of his shoulder against hers as they sit side-by-side on his couch, scouring tape after tape; the beyond-colleagues hug he wrapped her in when her flight from Istanbul landed; the iron grip they had on each other’s hand as they walked along the _Quai du Mont-Blanc_ , trying to waste time before their fateful meeting with Thomas Warren. If she could compile them all, somehow, layer them neatly together into a file and air these moments, no one else would understand.

Against her lips, Strand hums with pleasure. Another shiver dances along her limbs at the sound. He must feel it where his hands are all over her, because he pulls back and reaches up to cup her face; his thumb sweeps at her hair, tucking it neatly behind her ear. Whatever he wants to say, he seems to sidestep as he drops a light kiss against her forehead. Pulling back from her, he shoves the window closed against the cold mountain air. 

“Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.” 

Before she can protest, he’s gathering his things and closing the door behind him. Every nerve ending in her body demands she follow him, but her instinct rears its ugly (but sensible) head. Prodding at Strand when he’s not ready will only serve to make him retreat further, like some sort of (bespectacled, good-looking, aggravating) clam. 

“Okay,” she says, taking a deep breath to settle herself. Going through the motions of readying for bed, she sets the TV to a _Law and Order: SVU_ rerun on low, packs away her recorder into her bag, and strips off her bra -- though not without some quiet mumbling about how someone else could be doing that part for her. 

A knock sounds at her door while she’s brushing her teeth. The hallway is empty when she answers, only a bag of frozen peas laying on the floor. A glance down the hall shows Strand’s door closed, though she can see light filter in underneath the crack. 

Stepping back inside, she settles into bed with her fuzzy socks and her towel-wrapped peas. She doesn’t even make it to Cabot’s prosecution. 

\-----

The peas, of all things, wake her up. 

Not the nightmares that plagued her for the few, short hours she actually slept, but the bag of frozen vegetables. Well, not so frozen now, seeing as when she tugs them out of the sheets, they squish under her grip, the bag now lukewarm from her body heat. 

Dropping them off the side of the bed, Alex shifts to read the clock on the nightstand. Six minutes past four, she reasons, isn’t a ridiculous time to start the day. Besides, if she gets up now, she’ll have a chance to shower again and loosen up her shoulder, and won’t have to fight the other guests for hot water. 

She doesn’t take long to dress, opting for Strand’s wool socks as she tugs on her boots and exits her room in search of coffee. The house is quiet. The only light comes from the hallway sconces that guide her down towards the stairs and into the foyer. Floorboards creak as she crosses to the front door; she winces at the loud thunk of the deadbolt releasing. Using her phone as a flashlight, she descends the porch steps and cuts across the parking lot. 

And realizes all too late when she finds the sleek, little C-Class that the car keys are with Strand. Who is all the way back upstairs and would likely refuse to hand them over due to the early hour, and/or Alex’s penchant for driving all over hill and dale in the name of a case, forgetting about things like time constraints and departure flights, of which they have later today up in Roanoke.

“Fuck,” she whispers, the fog from her breath catching in the phone’s light. 

Weighing the temperature over her need for caffeine, she loads up Google Maps on her phone to judge the distance from here to the gas station down the road. Her blue dot spins around for two minutes before she gives up on a solid connection and decides to hoof it, directions be damned. 

This early on the weekend, the roads are as sleepy as the little mountain town. Spread across the dark blanket that night still has draped across the valley, the only lights are distant and stationary; porch lights that were forgotten after everyone went to bed or cell towers that blink lazily, red stars fading in and out against the black. The fluorescent lights of the station’s overhang are visible for the last quarter mile of her hike, taunting her through the trees with its promise of burnt coffee and plastic-wrapped pastries.

The overnight attendant seems much more eager to discuss the town’s secret, given that the only other person in the building is a man playing over the speakers, singing about Vietnam and moonshine. Alex figures she can fix the background audio in post. 

“It’s ‘cause of the witch, you know,” Doug says as he scans her items. Two coffees and two packs of Swiss Rolls -- one of each for Strand if he doesn’t make a show about her going off on her own. 

“I thought that was just a nickname for it, given the name of the town.” 

“Nah, it’s where our name _comes_ from. There was a woman named Maggie Lawrence who was part of the Roanoke Island colony.” He finishes bagging her sweets and leans forward, his eyes growing wide behind his glasses. “You know, the one that disappeared _without a trace_. Story goes that she was the only surviving member of the Croatoan tribe’s attack. She fled west and learned to live off the land, drawing magic from it to survive. Eventually, she reached here and lived out the rest of her life alone, scarred by the horrors she’d seen. She died sometime in the 1600s and was buried up in the state park -- before there was one, ‘course.” 

Alex has to give it to the guy, he sure knows how to weave a tale -- one that would likely get passed over on the subreddit she peruses on occasion.

“You said she was alone. So, did she bury herself?” 

“What? Oh -- no,” he stammers, backpedaling to recover. “I mean, her skeleton was found whenever the settlers arrived here in the early 1800s, and they gave her a proper burial. Buncha years later, during the Great Depression, folks that were desperate for money started digging just about everywhere for coal, hoping to get lucky. A farmer ended up digging up her grave and unleashing her spirit. Ever since then, the Nuisance has appeared. Her revenge on the locals who desecrated her resting place.” 

\-----

The story is the only one she’s heard that differs from the rest, and isn’t just a racist assumption of the native people. 

This vengeful spirit has a name, at least, and is tied to a historical event, which is something she can research. Alex lifts her phone up to check the time. When she gets back, she could probably convince Strand to let her squeeze in a quick visit with Anne Faulks again, see if she could expand on the witch angle. 

Beside her, the shoulder of the road slopes down to a small clearing. From the black circle of fog, a pair of yellow eyes flash under the light from her phone. Alex freezes in place. Her sluggish brain tries to discern whether she should be afraid of a coyote or not. She’s confused even more when the valley glows brighter and brighter as another shaft of light cuts down the hill and across the pasture. 

The coyote slinks off to the safety of the trees as an engine roars up out of the dark. A pickup truck crests the hill, its headlights blinding. Alex stumbles back to the shoulder to avoid being hit, slamming her hip against the cold guardrail. The pickup grinds to a stop about fifty feet away. It idles in the center of the road, the brake lights illuminating the stickers on the back window. _Don’t Tread On Me_ glows against its yellow background. The driver’s side window rolls down with a whine. 

“Miz Reagan!” Bobby calls out, flapping his hand as if she missed him barreling down the road at her. 

Realizing she has little choice in the matter, she walks over to the pickup. He looks her over and then scans the darkened landscape surrounding them. “What in the hell’re you doing out here?”

She holds up the coffee cups and gives them a little shake. “Caffeine, for Doctor Strand and me.” 

“Well,” Bobby breathes out. “I’m sure glad I found you. I was headin’ down to the sheriff’s station to see if someone would come with me, but the only person there this time of day would be that little shit CC, and you’re probably the most qualified, given what all you’ve seen.”

The hope that he stopped to offer her a ride back to her lodgings dies quickly, only to be replaced by skepticism. There’s enough curiosity, though, to keep her from brushing him off immediately. 

“What’s going on?” 

Leaning through the open window, he speaks in a low tone, as if he’s worried he’ll be overheard.

“I found something out in the woods. I don’t know what to make of it, but it has to do with the sinkhole, I’m sure of it. I couldn’t see very well with just my light -- but I know I saw something out there in the woods. Something truly unbelievable, Miz Reagan.” He shakes his head, glancing out the back window and then the windshield, and then back to Alex. “Don’t got time to get into it -- it might explain everything, but the sinkhole’s due to close any day now and I need someone with one of those fancy camera phones so I can get me some proof.” 

“If you can take me back, I’ll get Doctor Strand and follow you--”

“No can do,” he interrupts with another shake of his head. “I told you, I don’t got the time to waste on waitin’ around. Might be gone by the time I get back there, anyway, but I’ve gotta try.” 

“How long will it take?”

“No more’n an hour or two,” he promises. “It’s some distance to get there. And that depends on how fast you can keep up.”

Biting at her lip, Alex thinks it over. Even if the ride is a waste of time, it shouldn’t take much longer -- and the flight home isn’t until the afternoon. It would be a shame, too, to pass up the opportunity, given that what audio she has right now is a meandering story with no real conclusion. 

He practically breathes out a sigh of relief as she rounds the truck and boosts herself up into the cab. 

“Thank you, Miz Reagan.” 

“I should be thanking you,” she tells him after a quick laugh, “as long as you’ll let me get some useful audio out of this.”

They make a U-turn and head north up the highway. Alex watches the warm porch lights of the bed and breakfast as they blur past. Country music plays from the speakers, just loud enough to be heard over the rumble of the road underneath them. She offers the other coffee to Bobby, since Strand isn’t going to be drinking it anytime soon. The early hour and blanket of fog make it difficult to pick out details along the roadside -- only the vague outlines of naked tree limbs and the dull ribbon of the occasional guardrail. The cab smells musky, a combination of mothballs and fresh mud -- the latter of which Alex can see coating the driver’s side floor mat. 

“What were you doing out here to begin with?” she asks after several quiet miles. 

“Fixing my hunting stand.” Slowing down, he turns onto a smaller road that drags them up, up into the fog. “All this rain washed some of the restraints out. I was on my way back when I come across it.”

“What did you find?” 

His eyes are wide when they meet hers, the look of wonder and disbelief on his face causing her to worry that she should have waited to ask her questions when they were safely parked. Right now, the only thing saving them from a deadly tumble down the mountainside was the rusted guardrail.

“Bones,” he hisses. “Human ones, all there at the bottom of the sinkhole. I didn’t get a count, but there’re probably over twenty.” 

“Twenty bones?”

“No, people. These are full-blown skeletons, Miz Reagan. I think it’s some kind of mass grave.” 

That, Alex can admit, she wasn’t expecting. A spooky-looking tree or some archaic symbols carved into a rock -- something that would frighten a good ol’ country boy, that’s what she assumed. The news of human remains and the fact that Bobby continues to drive further into the foggy wilderness gives her pause. 

“We should probably call the sheriff, then,” she says. 

He rolls through a stop sign and takes a left, shaking his head as she retrieves her phone.

“No, no, I don’t wanna get them involved yet. If we tell them, they’ll force us to stay away, keep us out while they do their business. And I want to see if I’m right.”

“Right about what?” She taps out a quick text to Strand about her current situation (and a rough estimation of her location). The progress bar stalls halfway through as her one bar of extended service drops to zero. 

“About the curse -- that the Indian spirits put a curse on the land when we messed with their ancient burial grounds. These could be those that were wronged!” 

Some way or another, it always seemed to lead back here. She tells herself that she shouldn’t be as surprised as she is. Instead of stoking that belief, she takes another route. 

“Doug back at the Quik Stop mentioned another legend that I hadn’t heard yet. The one about a witch?”

“Yeah,” Bobby scoffs, “I bet he did. But just ‘cause his momma claims to be some Wiccan priestess of the higher order of elves or… or whatever doesn’t mean he knows jack shit.” 

The animosity in his voice tells her to ease off the questions. 

Readjusting his hand on the steering wheel, he shifts into a lower gear as their climb becomes a plummet, the road banking back down the mountain. Alex wonders how far they’ve actually gone. Given the constant curves, it feels like twenty miles, but she isn’t sure. She hasn’t seen a street sign in a while, despite the few turns Bobby has made. The few houses stitched along the mountainside are all dark. The next turn takes them onto a dirt road. The truck rattles across the deep dips in the soil. The pink blur of a shrub flashes along the shoulder. Grass and weeds gradually overtake the path, brushing against the undercarriage as they ease down into a hollow. 

“All righty, we’re here.”

Here, Alex notes, being an ambiguous section of trees. A no trespassing sign, sun-faded and worn, hangs from a nearby tree. Two large rocks mark what might have been a trail at one point, but the heavy thicket of rhododendron tells her it’s been a long while since anyone maintained it. What might have been a yellow blaze on one of the rocks has faded after years under the sun. 

The truck rolls to a stop and Bobby shuts off the engine. Patches of static burst through the radio until he slaps a hand on the dial and silence fills the cab. Ahead of them, the headlights illuminate the weed-choked road that continues up the hill. 

“Where does this lead to?” 

“The McCrary’s old place.” 

He kills the lights and hops out of the truck. Alex follows suit and wishes she’d thought to bring an actual flashlight with her this morning. Her phone is decent but here, surrounded on all sides by forest, the darkness is oppressive. “No one lives there anymore. Their only kid died in Vietnam and they both passed in the eighties. Been abandoned ever since.”

Reaching down into the bed, he hauls out a backpack and a lantern. Gazing up the dark road, Alex can imagine it: a little house tucked back in the woods, left to the wilderness with its lace curtains and ceramic figurines. “Had a problem couple years back of kids going up there and setting fires and breaking shit,” he continues, pocketing his keys and sliding on his pack. “Spray painted pentagrams and all kindsa crap.” 

The picture she has in her head splinters. 

“Oh.” 

“Come on, then,” he beckons her. 

His lantern swings as he approaches the treeline; the bright light lurches up and down with each step, slicing at the trunks and branches before they slip back into the black. With a last look down the road, she follows. 

\-----

Holding the recorder under her light for the fortieth time, Alex debates shutting it off to conserve the battery. 

The hike so far has been more of a slog, shoving aside low-hanging limbs and stepping on briers to avoid their sharp prickles. Not that any of this has slowed Bobby down, who seems intent on reaching the bodies as if they’re all going to get up and walk off. 

She shakes away that image. Best to not consider a horde of skeletons marching towards them through the woods. 

“Do you think it’s possible that the sinkhole opened up an old burial site?” she asks, needing to fill the silence with something other than their heavy breathing as they shove through another thicket. 

On a nearby tree, a faint, yellow rectangle glows under her light, the only indication that they’re on an actual trail and not just wandering in circles. “They could be members of a settlement that died while making their way west.” 

Bobby mulls over the idea, but she can tell from the twisted frown on his face that he isn’t going to give it much credence. It doesn’t fit into his preferred narrative of vengeful natives. 

“Could be,” he shrugs. “But -- and you may know what I’m talking about, given your history with evil stuff like demons ‘n such -- but I got the feeling that they’s more to it. It felt… eerie. You know what I mean?” 

She resists the urge to look too close at the woods surrounding them. Up ahead, she’s thankful to see that the trail widens as it crosses a clearing.

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Which is true, but not what she wants to discuss right now. “So, did you listen to the podcast?” 

He shakes his head and chuckles. 

“Nah. No offense, but it’s not my thing. I was curious, so I had my cousin look you up on the internet, since he’s got one of those smart phones. He ended up on some website board thing, people on there talking about your show and what not. It’s why I’m glad that I ran into you.”

Ahead of them, a creek glints under their lights. Water churns around the rocks and branches, snowmelt making its way down from higher up the mountain. 

Alex takes the bait. “Why is that?”

“I wanted someone with me who I could trust,” he explains. “Someone who would believe what I saw. I knew you would -- you seemed to’ve made a name for yourself, looking into stuff like this. You saw that woman jump in without one iota of hesitation.” 

He comes to a stop a few feet ahead and turns to look at her. The lantern casts shadows along his face, the hollow of his eyes hiding in the black. “You saw firsthand what kind of power the sinkhole has. What it does to people. It’s something to be marveled at, a natural wonder.” 

Fuck this, Alex decides as warning bells ring inside her head. Despite his worries that the sinkhole would close back up, she’s positive that if they head back, wait for the sun to rise, and call the sheriff to accompany them, they would find the bodies much faster. Just as she’s about to voice her change in plans, something moves. 

They both freeze, keeping still as it creeps closer, twigs and pebbles crunching under its weight. Raising the lantern, Bobby takes a step towards the creek. Across the way, a head and neck move out from behind a tree. It takes Alex a few, slow seconds before she recognizes it as a deer. 

“Little early for her to be out,” he murmurs as they both watch the deer turn tail and dart back into the shadows. “We probably interrupted her on her way for a morning drink.” 

Her breath hitches. The warning bells turn into tornado sirens. She thinks of the magazine from the cabin, the one open to the article _Tips for Bagging Your Buck!_ and, under the headline, the deer season dates. 

“You all right?” Bobby glances at the line of trees and then back to her. “That deer ain’t gonna hurt you. Ran off alre--”

“Wait -- but deer season is over,” she can hear herself saying, despite her inner voice telling her to _shut the fuck up_. “Why were you out here to set up a stand?” 

He’s going to tell her that he illegally hunts in the off-season. Or that he was lying, she tries to reassure herself, that he made it up to get her out here so she could look at some old bones and reinforce his curse fantasy. Regardless of his reason, she takes a step back to create some distance between them. 

“Knew I should’ve taken that with me.” The words are low and rough, spoken on the end of a ragged sigh. “I’m real sorry about this, Miz Reagan.” 

Then he swings to face her, his lantern blinding. 

She throws up her arms to defend herself but all she can see are spots -- and then Bobby, his eyes wild as he slams his shoulder into her. A burst of pain rattles her chest. The earth moves under her feet, a sick sensation of weightlessness rushing through her. The ground rises up to meet her. Sharp points of rocks gouge at her neck and back and face as she twists to her side, sucking in a breath to cry for help. Bobby clambers over her hips and forces her down. One gloved hand grips her jaw and grinds her cheek against the forest floor. Dirt coats her lips and clogs her throat. Bucking her body against his, she tries to create the space needed to free her arms. Years of articles and classes on self-defense have drilled into her the necessity of her hands to claw and maim.

“Won’t help none to scream.” 

“Fuck you!” she shouts, squirming under his hold.

He leans his weight into his hand and shifts to get to his backpack, dropping it down into the dirt beside her. With his attention split between her and the bag, Alex jerks her head to right and catches his thumb between her teeth. Biting down hard, she tastes oil and leather and, finally, blood and hopes it’s his. Bobby shouts and wrenches his hand free. She uses the precious second to twist, digging her heels into the ground, and shifts to free her hands. 

She strikes, her nails gouging at his eyes and nose. 

He knocks her arms down and grabs hold of her head, yanking her up and then slamming her skull down, hard, twice against a rock.

What little she can see goes blurry, green and brown swirling into the black. Despite the cold ground at her back, she feels a rush of vertigo, as if the world is falling out from under her. The lantern swings wildly in the crook of Bobby’s elbow. Light catches and bounces off something out in the clearing, too high and too distant to be the creek. Glass, she thinks, a window. Then, squinting to make out a shape in the darkness, she realizes it’s the hunting cabin. 

The bitter taste of comprehension coats her tongue. The strange, winding drive and the neglected trail all made sense now.

She manages to turn her head enough to watch him. Rocking back and forth between her and his backpack, he digs frantically, spitting out curses. 

“People,” she tries, pausing to take a deep breath and pleading for the forest to stop spinning. “People will come… come looking for me.” 

Pulling a handful of plastic string out of the bag, he sighs. 

“I know. That’s the idea.” He grabs her hands in one of his. She tries to tug free, but she’s incapacitated and he’s much stronger. “I was waiting for a kid. People -- they always wanna find a kid, but then you come down here and I knew that you’d do. I’m getting desperate. This whole town is.”

Not string, she realizes when he tightens the plastic around her wrists, but a zip-tie. “Thought I wasn’t gonna get the chance with that partner of yours hanging around, but I knew the good Lord would give me an opportunity.”

“Go fuck... yourself.” 

Bobby shakes his head and lets out a pitiful laugh. She tests the zip-tie, the plastic digging into her skin, as he drags her boots off and secures another tie around her ankles. 

“This town is as good as dead unless its folks get up and do something about it. And that’s what I’m doing. Not spending our tax dollars on hoity-toity stadiums like our piece a shit mayor,” he spews, his face twisted into a wrinkled scowl. “As if those little shits are gonna go pro.” Shuffling to kneel beside her, he drags in a breath and releases it with a little sigh. “But you -- people will come down to search for you. It’ll be all over the news here, and then it’ll spread. Folks will come down for you, and they’ll stay and they’ll eat and they’ll gawk at the sinkhole -- but mostly, they’ll spend money.” 

Alex swallows back another wave of nausea. The tie around her wrists isn’t budging, but she thinks she could get the ankle one off, if only she could find a rock sharp enough.

“You don’t have to do this,” she attempts to reason with him. “I -- my show, I’m going to… do an episode about the town. People--”

“Well,” he interrupts her with another sigh, his attention set on whatever he’s trying to pull out of his pack, “too late for that, now, idn’t it? I can’t rely on others. Couldn’t rely on you to fly back and spend weeks piecing together your episode. The sinkhole’s gonna be gone within the next few days. I gotta act fast.” 

From out of the pack comes a plastic container. Alex cranes her neck to see the lantern catch against gray and black scales. Every muscle tightens as an invisible rope coils around her chest and squeezes. She recognizes the pattern from a photo in her guidebook -- the one she flipped through once on the plane here. What little she does remember of the timber rattlesnake’s profile are the effects of its bite: visual disturbances, coordination problems, and spasms. None of which sound like a fun way to spend her last moments on earth.

“I know them boys told you about my folks. How we can handle the Devil himself and not get bit.” 

Popping open the lid, Bobby rests a hand on the edge of the container and runs his fingers along the snake. It gives a short, warning rattle. With another small sweep of the ground, her foot hits the hard edge of a rock; she curls her toes around it and drags it closer.

“‘Behold,’” he recites in a whisper, his attention on the snake, “‘I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.’”

“It won’t work,” she tells him through the fear that clogs her throat. “They’ll -- when they find me, they’ll see the marks from the ties. They’ll know I didn’t just stumble out here by myself--”

“They never did find the others. But they were all hippies and runaways. No one really made a fuss about them.” 

The disappointment in his tone is unmistakable; it drives the nail of panic deeper into her chest. Thinking of the missing posters, of the smiling faces situated above bold lines of text that list their names and information and their last known location, Alex works her heels harder against the rock. 

“You’re a fucking monster,” she hisses.

“I might be,” he admits with a resigned shrug. “But I’m just trying to do right by this town.” 

Shuffling to his feet, he picks up the lantern and scans the ground. Alex spots the glint before he does and wiggles towards it, hoping in vain to reach it first, but her bound limbs and possible concussion slow her down. Tears spring to her eyes when he bends down and plucks her recorder from the creek’s edge. Aside from the one failed text on her phone, the recorder -- still running, despite the fall -- contains her only solid proof. 

Hooking the lantern around his wrist, he runs his gloved hands across the plastic surface. Partially distracted from finding a new, sharper rock to use against the zip-tie, it takes Alex a moment to realize what he’s doing. 

“There’s no tape,” she scowls. “It’s digital, you fucking moron.”

He grumbles to himself about technology and raises his arm to smash it against a tree trunk. 

A loud clap of noise interrupts him. Another echoes off in the distance and then louder, sounding through the trees. Gunfire, she thinks at first, hoping that someone is coming to her rescue. But the sound keeps building and building as it races closer. Bobby fumbles to raise his lantern. The recorder falls back to the earth and Alex rolls on her side to snatch it up. If she dies, at least they’ll find the evidence clutched in her fists. 

The light lets them see the beast as it roars out of the dark. It snaps apart roots and spits debris into the air, sending shrapnel of wood and rock flying. Tremors roil underneath them as the forest collapses in on itself; trees topple and crash, limbs snap and splinter. Carving its way in front of them along the creek bed, the sinkhole cleaves the earth in two with a deafening howl before grinding to a stop a hundred feet ahead. 

“They ho-ly shit,” Bobby sputters. 

With his attention on the destruction, Alex saws through the last few centimeters of the zip-tie. Determination surges through her when she hears the plastic snap apart. She pulls her knees up just as he turns to face her, reaching for the handgun tucked into his holster. “You better stay--” 

The solid kick she lands on his stomach forces him backwards. He loses his balance and flails, his shoes skidding along the slick surface of a root. His mouth parts in a silent scream as he disappears over the edge. There’s nothing, and then: the sickening sound of tearing flesh, greasy and wet. 

Alex’s breath comes out in sobs. Flipping over onto her stomach, she crawls over to look down. 

The lantern burns brightly at his side. Caught in the same roots that ensnare him, it illuminates the root burrowed into his back and through his stomach. Blood runs down in rivulets to the creek below, forming puffs of dark, red clouds before the water washes them downstream. His moans echo up to her from fifty feet below, though the words he whispers are lost to the churn of the creek. 

Not that his last words matter much, anyway. Because the moment she sees him, skewered and gutted like a fish, Alex leaps to her feet. 

The forest around her spins and spins. Hands still bound, she pushes past the dizziness and makes quick work of searching the area; she locates her phone, her boots, and the now-empty container. She hopes that the snake has found a new home far away from her. Leaving Bobby to his cries for help, she hurries back up the trail and into the dark. 

\-----

“Fuck.” She glares down at the log as she pulls herself over it. It’s the same one she crossed thirty minutes ago. “I’m going in circles. How am I going in circles?” 

Bringing her phone up, she taps the screen and wishes for the hundredth time that it would blink to life. In her hundred panicked attempts to reach Strand or the police, though, she drained the battery. Now, the smooth surface of the screen is only useful as a comfort item. 

She knows that she should rest and wait for dawn so she can tell where the hell she’s going. It’s why lost hikers are encouraged to hunker down during the night, because it’s damn-near impossible to navigate unfamiliar terrain in the dark. Though, as far as she’s aware, no one knows she’s missing. For as much fuss as he makes about leaving early to catch flights, even Strand isn’t going to be up at… six? Six-thirty?

She isn’t even sure what time it is. Muted, gray light seeps down through the canopy. Everything else is shadows, which means that if she makes a few (more) wrong turns, she could end up back at the sinkhole. Nevermind that she can still somehow hear the noise of the creek, despite the fact that she should be a few miles from it. The reassurance that she’s just imagining it brings her little solace. 

Giving in to her aching body, Alex drops down onto the log and bites back the sob that wants to escape. She can allow herself to rest, but she can’t allow the dam of her close call with death to break. Not now, at least, and not here, on a log in the middle of the forest that seems determined to keep her prisoner. 

“Not the time for a _Blair Witch_ reference,” she chides, trying to push past the way her voice cracks. 

Nudging at the underbrush with her boot, she searches for a sharp stick or rock to cut into the tie still around her wrists, cursing when her selections prove to be too dull. She’s so caught up in her hunt that she doesn’t notice the movement across the small clearing -- not until a twig breaks and her head snaps up, a rock clutched between both hands, ready to strike. 

Standing in a patch of light, a deer watches her for a long moment, as if amused by her presence. Its ears flick forward when Alex sets the rock back down. She can’t tell if it’s the same deer from earlier -- it had been too dark and, besides, they all look the same. As if it can read her thoughts, the deer snorts out a breath and ambles forward a few feet, but keeps its gaze trained on her. 

“What?” she asks dumbly.

The earth turns just enough and sunlight starts slipping down over the mountain. The thick blanket of gray fades as morning pours into the valley, casting golden bars through the trees. The clearing glows to life: leaves sparkle as dew clings to their edges and the low, lingering fog hovers in thick, honeyed strokes. From high above, bird songs carry down from their perches. The distant rush of the creek disappears under their calls. 

The deer moves off and starts up the hill.

“Okay.” The words are more for self-motivation than anything else. Bracing her bound hands against the log, Alex struggles to her feet and starts across the clearing. “Okay, I’m coming.” 

She follows a short distance behind, letting the deer lead her up the hill. It’s slow-going, even with the help of her strange animal companion. The incline is sharper than she remembers when descending it earlier, but the odd-looking, corkscrew vines of a mountain laurel grove are a familiar landmark. 

Pausing at the top, the deer shifts to look back at Alex. High above the animal’s head, a slap of paint forms a faded, yellow rectangle. From there, the obscure outline of the trail reveals itself in the morning light, cutting its way through the land below. In the distance, the harsh lines of the pickup peek out from between the trees. Glancing back at the deer, she watches it lope through the underbrush, until it rounds a tree and is gone from sight. 

Murmuring her thanks, Alex darts down the slope. Skidding on wet leaves, she barely feels the torn skin on her palms when she breaks her fall on rough bark. She shoves past the rhododendrons and rushes out between the two rocks. A sob of relief heaves out of her when her boots hit the gravelled road. 

Alex curses when she finds the truck locked. It’s a struggle to get the cinder block out of the bed with her hands tied, but she manages to wrestle it over the tailgate and returns to the passenger window. Heaving the thirty-pound block into the glass takes a few tries but, finally, the window shatters and pebbles of glass rain down into the cab. She pops the door open and snatches her bag from the floor, shaking it clean of glass shards before looping it awkwardly over her head. In the glove box she finds a hunting knife and uses it to saw through the zip-tie. 

She leaves the door hanging open. 

Starting back down the drive, she considers which direction she should go once she reaches the main road. This far into the mountains means her chances of coming across a passing motorist are slim. She has a vague recollection of the turns they took, but Alex knows she can’t make it all the way back to town on foot. Does she try to go left, and see if she’s close enough to the next town over? Or will that waste precious time that she could have used getting closer to--

Her internal debate is interrupted by a mailbox. It’s painted a pale pink, with the brighter pink flowers of an azalea bush blooming behind it. Two bluebirds frame the looping inscription of _The Hendersons_. The house, when she reaches it, is more of a cottage, quaint and nondescript. A cheery garden flag along the front walk welcomes spring. 

The porch light flares to life on her nineteenth knock.

“All right, hold your horses, I’m ‘a comin’!” a voice calls from the other side. 

The door swings inward and an older woman stares at her through the screen door, her green eyes going wide. Alex realizes then what a sight she must be, what with the blood and bruises covering her face. “Oh, sweetheart, what in the world happened to--”

“Who is it?” Another woman appears from behind her, wrapping a protective arm around the older woman’s shoulder. When she sees Alex standing on the porch, her drawn face falls into one of shock. “They Lord Jesus! Honey, you’re all banged-up--”

“I know,” Alex snaps, wincing at how rude she sounds. But minutes ago she thought she might be lost in the woods forever, and an hour ago she thought she was going to be the victim of a probable serial murderer, so she’s feeling a little short on time. 

“Can I use your phone?” she asks in a calmer tone. “I need to call the police.”

\-----

Carol and Susanne Henderson make a great cup of coffee. 

They make four of them, in fact, while they fuss over her. As Susanne searches for her first aid kit, Alex counts the overwhelming number of ceramic frogs that litter the small kitchen. 

By the time CC arrives, her wounds have been washed and bandaged, her cell phone charged, and her shoulders covered with a crocheted blanket. Susanne forces a cup into CC’s hands before ushering Carol out and giving them the kitchen for privacy. In the living room ten feet away, the television clicks on to the morning news. The anchors are discussing the local animal shelter story. It’s the same segment that aired last night, which, to Alex, feels like a lifetime ago. 

“I’m sorry it took me so long. That new crack tore up a good chunk out of Topside Road. I had to go back and…” CC trails off, studying her pale form. “Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable makin’ your statement at the--”

“No.” Alex shakes her head. Her grip tightens on the cup to ensure the rest of her doesn’t follow suit. “No, I -- it’s fresh, right now. I don’t want to wait.”

“Okay.” He settles into the chair across from her and sets a recorder on top of the table. “I brought my own equipment this time, if you don’t mind.” 

She attempts a chuckle on his behalf. Despite the coffee, though, her throat feels dry, as if she’s still lying on the forest floor, breathing in around the dirt. Her heart thunders in her chest. She blames it on the caffeine. 

“As long as you can send me a copy of the audio when we’re done here.”

“You’ll have to talk me through it, but sure. Now, whenever you’re ready, you tell me what happened.” 

Dragging in another sip of coffee, she sits back in her chair and recounts the terrible, no good, very bad morning she’s had. She makes it all the way to running into the deer when there’s a commotion at the front door. 

“Where is -- Alex, where is she? Alex?”

She turns in her chair in time to see Strand barreling through the living room and into the kitchen. He drops into a crouch and wraps his arms around her. 

The bruises protest, but she ignores them as she shoves the coffee cup aside and throws her arms around his shoulders. His breath goes choppy as he gathers her impossibly closer. Then, as if recalling the bandages he glimpsed, Strand pulls back and away, fumbling for a moment until he settles into the empty chair beside her. His eyes are wild, a stormy mixture of lingering fright and immediate relief. He rests his hand on hers, mindful of the bandages wrapped around her palms and wrists.

“How are your injuries? The sheriff said you--”

“I’m okay,” she assures. “A little bruised and scraped, but nothing that won’t heal.” 

He doesn’t say anything to that, just continues to watch her like she’s going to disappear before his very eyes. “One of the homeowners is a retired RN. She patched me up.” 

His gaze drifts to the bandage on her temple; he reaches up to cup her face and drags a thumb across the cut on her cheekbone. He’s warm, warmer than the rainbow blanket or the tiny kitchen. Alex leans into his touch. 

“I got your text. The one you sent back… before…” he clears his throat, his thumb stuttering against her skin. “It didn’t wake me. The sheriff pounding on my door did. I wish it... I could have gotten here before--”

“It’s okay,” she whispers, then shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have left. I just wanted a cup of coffee and--”

“ _Alex_.” Those blue eyes of his glint as he pins her down with them. “I admit that I wish you hadn’t gone off by yourself and… but you -- this, none of this is your fault.”

“I was going to be bait. A missing media personality in the news would garner more attention, bring in more people. Local stations would report first and then big outlets would run with it, with a separate segment on the strange, podunk town with its weird sinkhole and funny superstitions.” She sucks in a breath, her mouth quirking up on one side. “It would have worked. Let’s be honest, it would have gotten my attention.” Digging into her jacket pocket, she pulls out her recorder. “I was rolling. I have it all on tape.” 

She presses play without waiting for a response, the audio squeaking as she skips forward to Bobby confronting and attacking her. 

“ _Won’t help none to scream_ ,” his voice warns. 

The quiet kitchen fills with the noise of her choking, breathing in around the dirt as Bobby holds her down. The recorder’s plastic casing rattles against the table from her shaking hand. 

“ _People will come… come looking for me_.”

“ _I know. That’s the idea. I was waiting for a kid. People -- they always wanna find a kid, but then you come down here and I knew--”_

Strand pries the recorder from her grasp and presses stop. 

“I’m taking you back to town.” He stands, his hand sliding around to help her up.

“But I want to--”

“Well, now, Sheriff did want to speak with her.”

Alex glances across the table, having forgotten CC was there at all. She gives him the credit of starting off strong, but he quickly folds under Strand’s scowl. 

“She just played you proof of what would have been her murder had a seismic force not taken the bastard out. I’m taking her home.” 

“At least lemme tell the sheriff that y’all are headin’ back,” CC says. “He can have the paramedics meet you at my sister’s place and check you out there.”

“Oh, no, I’m--”

“Yes, that would be fine.”

“Richard, I told you that--”

It’s an argument she isn’t going to win. 

So it really doesn’t matter, then, that they’re interrupted by the mug rack. Mounted on the far wall, the cups hanging from it begin to clank. Within seconds the rest of the kitchen follows suit, glasses and dishes and frogs clinking and jangling as the world rocks and rolls. Strand shoves Alex to the floor and crowds her underneath the table, hugging her tight against his chest. 

She has enough time to wonder if the earth is going to fall out from underneath them and swallow them whole when the shaking stops. 

From the living room come Carol and Susanne, worrying over them and a few frogs that didn’t survive the quake. Strand helps Alex out from underneath the table. CC makes three attempts at reaching his colleagues before a staticky assurance of an A-okay sounds over the radio.

“You all hang tight for a moment there,” Deel’s voice crackles through the radio. “I’ll be down there in a jiffy to let you know how to proceed.”

Alex reaches out and grabs hold of Strand’s hand, cutting off the argument she knows is brewing behind his frown. He glances down at her and lifts an eyebrow, to which she answers with a leveled look. He sighs, but relents, and, after repeated assurances from Alex that she isn’t going to keel over without him standing guard, goes to help Carol fetch a new coffee tin from the upper shelf. 

The sheriff’s cruiser rolls up the driveway just as the pot is finished brewing.

“Did another crack open up?” CC asks as Deel stirs in four heaping tablespoons of sugar into his coffee. 

“No. Just the opposite, in fact.” At the kitchen full of expectant faces, Deel sighs. “What I mean is the hole sealed itself up. Almost took Leslie with it, as close as she was getting to the body to get her photographs.”

“You said body--” 

His hand flaps in the air, silencing Alex’s question. 

“Oh, yeah, he was long-dead before it happened. Leslie guesses he bled out within five to ten minutes, given the size of the--” Deel pauses, his eyebrows furrowing as he steers the conversation away from where he’s taken it. “--but, uh, now we’ve got the problem of figuring out how to excavate, if that’s even possible.” 

“I’m fine with leavin’ him there to rot,” CC mutters. 

“Wouldn’t be fair to the McCrary’s, though,” Susanne speaks up from her perch against the counter, “being on their land.”

“We’ll try our best, Missus Henderson,” CC promises, catching Alex’s eye as he continues. “We’ll give him a grave, a proper place so folks can spit on it.”

\-----

The sun is already hovering above the treetops when Strand and Alex are allowed to head back to town.

Having swapped the crocheted blanket for Strand’s coat (at its owner’s insistence), she isn’t surprised when her eyelids start to droop. The heated seats of the rental are too comfortable. There’s also the matter of her nose, pressed against the collar’s lining where the scent of tea leaves and expensive cologne mix to create a calming effect. If it wasn’t for the townspeople, she might have fallen asleep. 

Strand is the first to notice them, being the vigilant driver, and eases down onto the brake. The sudden stop catches Alex’s attention and her gaze snaps up to the front window. 

“What are they doing?” she wonders aloud. 

In the center of town, a crowd of people are gathered in the road. Some are dressed in their Sunday best, with their bright florals and stiff polyester; some are still in their pajamas. Church-goers crowd their respective front stoops, uncaring of the state of disrepair, and raise their hands in praise. Rising above the crowd’s murmuring, a preacher recites a verse from Deuteronomy, reminding his congregation that their Lord will never leave or forsake them. Cars choke up the shoulder on either side of the road, their passengers hopping out, their phones primed for a photo. It reminds Alex of driving through Rainier and watching the tourists clamber over each other to get a snap of a distant grizzly. 

The earth is a rocky seam, stitched through with roots and shale. The bridge is now just a slab of wood, its trestles buried in the ground below. A quad-cab Super Duty pickup is the first to cross, making a show of it by revving the engine. Soon, a parade of sedans and minivans make their way across. 

“The sheriff was right. The sinkhole closed itself up.” 

“That isn’t possible.”

She brings her phone up and snaps a photo of the spectacle.

“It is in this town.”

\-----

The sun has already dipped back behind the mountains when Alex opens her eyes again.

Golden bars paint the ceiling of her room. The pillow she’s lying on smells of a mixture of coffee grounds, detergent, and sweat; it shifts underneath her when she burrows closer. 

“You stayed.”

“You asked me to.” His words tickle the crown of her head. 

Alex vaguely recalls her boots whacking against a doorframe and a whispered apology, followed by the soft caress of a high thread count. She remembers fumbling a hand out and catching at wool between her fingers, and asking him to stay with her. She remembers the low, rolling tone of his voice and his warm fingers lacing through hers. 

The same fingers that skate up and down her arm that’s draped over his stomach. 

“Would you like me to lea--”

“No.” She squeezes him tighter. “No, I’d like you to stay right here, if that’s okay with you.”

“Of course.”

The quiet stretches between them for long minutes. She lets the dead air say all the things she’s too tired to get out. As if he can hear her, he takes her hand and brings it up to his lips. The kiss buzzes up through the tendons of her wrist, running like a live wire underneath her injuries. 

“Is this where you give me my lecture about not getting into cars with strangers?”

“No, because I already did that while you were asleep.” When she shifts her weight onto her elbow to sit up, all in effort to raise her eyebrow at him, he elaborates. “I knew that yelling at you while you were unconscious would do the same amount of good as when you were awake.”

He lets her chuckle at him until he can’t seem to take it anymore, and swallows up her laughter with a kiss to her lips. 

“I’m sorry.” He pulls away, but remains close enough that his mouth brushes against her forehead as he speaks. 

“What for?” 

She was, after all, the idiot that walked straight into a murderer’s trap. _Possible serial murderer_ , her thoughts correct, and if she grips Strand a little tighter at the thought, then who would blame her?

“Where do I begin?” he asks with a sigh. 

“If you’re taking suggestions, I think you could start with that first interview.” She grins when he rolls his eyes at her. “Dismissing me that abruptly, after I found your super secret stash? Talk about obvious.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you wanted to be caught. You left that door open for a reason.”

“You project too much.”

She bounces her shoulders up in a lazy shrug. He moves aside the curtain of her hair and sinks his hand into the dark waves. 

“Yeah, but my track record for being right is pretty stellar, you have to admit.” The look on his face tells her that he would rather swallow a thousand swords than admit such a thing. “Especially all of my assumptions about you.” 

The previous look fades to one of intrigue. 

“What assumptions?”

“If you listened to the show, you would know.”

“I don’t like hearing the sound of my own voice.”

“That’s a shame. It’s a really good one.” 

She lets him have his huff of annoyance before setting her lips upon the fond grin that’s spread at her compliment. The hand not tangled in her hair settles on her waist, steadying her as she wiggles closer, her leg sliding between his. His touches are tame and respectable, which is admirable and all, but after a narrow brush with death, Alex craves a little more than mild. Tilting her head, she deepens the kiss. She stretches her body with its aches and its pains along his, humming with satisfaction when he opens his lips for her and she slides inside. Their kisses turn slick. His hand sears her flesh where he rucks up her sweater, his fingers skimming along the curve of her waist to the band of her bra. 

“Alex.” 

Feeling her own name growled against her lips does something to the pang of hunger in her belly. Her hand traces its own path down his neck and over his chest, emboldened by the groan that rumbles out of him. 

“Alex.” The tone is different, this time. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, embarrassment washing away the flare of heat from her blood. She starts to pull away when he hauls her back down. 

“No, I didn’t…” his brow furrows as he searches for the right words. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to get--”

“I think this is the most we’ve ever apologized to each other,” she interrupts him with a laugh. 

“You’re probably right.” He presses a chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth. “I only wanted to… request that things slow down. For your sake, mostly, but also for mine.” 

She smoothes her hand up over his chest and along his neck. His scruff prickles her palm as she cups his jaw, guiding him into a lazy kiss before shifting to rest her head on his chest. Cradling her there, Strand presses his lips to her hair and sighs. 

They linger there as the light spills out of the day and gives over to the night. They’re too busy wrapped in each other to notice as the golden blanket of the day falls away. It’s not until the radiator clanks to life in the corner that they part, broken from the spell that’s settled around the room. 

Strand tips his head back, grunting with effort as he stretches to switch on the bedside lamp. 

_Illumination_ , Alex thinks, blinking her eyes against the buttery glow, _the world has changed_. 

“We missed our flight.”

“There’s another one tomorrow,” comes his low, instant reassurance. “I already booked us on it. Unless you think you need to--”

“No. Home. I want to go home.”

“Okay,” he says, drawing her back to his side. 

The radiator hums along, the only other sound in the world. 

\-----

R.B.:  Human remains found in state park - via ABC News 

R.B.:  Seven skeletal remains found in state park in Virginia - NBC 7 Roanoke 

R.B.: holy shit you weren’t kidding

R.B.: this is wild

J.S.: glad to hear that you’re back home and doing well, though 

L.H.: yeah sorry to hear about what happened Alex

L.H.: let us know if you need anything 

S.M.: yeah we definitely owe you a beer when we’re in Seattle next

A.R.: as long as you all promise not to send any more Deliverance-inspired suggestions

A.R.: I’ve had enough of banjos for the time being

R.B.: lol promise

Alex looks up from the group chat when she hears the local news’ familiar chime. A sleek graphic of the Seattle skyline cuts to the evening anchors. The top stories are about the Mariners’ win against the Dodgers and a warehouse fire in Beacon Hill. She half-heartedly responds to the flood of well-wishes in the chat until the anchors segway into their next story. 

Her name is never mentioned, per her request. She’s a victim, after all, of a man who no longer poses a threat to the public.

Given that the last time she saw him was skewered on a tree root, she’s frustrated with herself at the prickle of fear that runs through her at Bobby’s face. They plaster him in the upper-left, a mugshot from an arrest in 2009 after he discharged a firearm inside a bar. 

Alex read up on him. She dug through the internet’s trenches and spoke with the same (and only) town librarian again. Except the mystery this time wasn’t the supernatural sinkhole, but the odd town drunk who went from selling junk along the roadside to murder.

Twelve suspected victims, at least, with the evidence that was found in his home. Jewelry and licenses and clothing scraps, all neatly packed into boxes, all ready -- according to agents on the case and passed along to her through Deputy Clinkenbeard -- to be sprinkled about in the woods, should the public become interested in searching for the victims again. Seven sets of remains were discovered a few hundred feet from the cabin. 

As Alex watches the B-roll footage of forensic techs gesturing across a small, roped-off clearing, she expects there will be more.

But where the mystery of the sinkhole remained, the mystery of Bobby Fontaine was answered: a self-imposed pariah who killed in the name of saving his town. A classic case of parasitism, Strand had pointed out on the plane ride back, with the town being harmed while Bobby reaped whatever benefits he could. Though, as far as the weird lights and strange sightings went, those remain buried with him, lost under the weight of thousands of pounds of bedrock. 

And that, she thought, was that -- until the Quik Stop receipt. 

Found amongst the junk and debris in Bobby’s truck, the crumpled paper was dated Saturday, March 23, 6:11 p.m. Nineteen gallons of fuel, a Snickers candy bar, and a six-pack of Natural Light. Not surprising as far as purchases go, given the man, but they weren’t the interesting part. Instead, in a tiny font under the store number, was the address: _5300 Chilhowie Pike, Matoaka, WV_. 

Quite a drive, Alex found when she mapped it out, being an hour-thirty from Coalwich Creek. And, while the police were busy figuring out the _why_ , she focused on the _when_. Because, according to the timestamp on her recorder, that would have been around the same time as their mysterious visitor outside the cabin.

“Just because it wasn’t him doesn’t mean it was some other… nefarious person. It was probably a curious hiker,” Strand argued over breakfast that morning. “There _were_ other people in the park with us.”

She’d come over on the pretense of a charger cord that had gotten mixed up with his luggage. Her attempt at covering up her sleepless night must have been worse than she thought, because he all but dragged her down for a meal when she arrived.

Alex, fork primed with a triangle of blueberry pancake (Strand’s doing, not hers), snorted into her breakfast. 

“And one of them followed us, circled us like a vulture, and then disappeared without a trace? I’m not buying it.” 

“What I’m not ‘buying’ is your suggestion that anything about our interaction, or, well, lack thereof, seemed paranormal.” 

“I didn’t say paranormal.”

“You were thinking it,” he accused, gesturing at her with his fork, tines-first. 

“How do you know that?”

“You get this... expression on your face.” 

It might have just been her, but his tone almost sounded amused. Now that she thinks back on it, it was probably the brain fog brought on by the pancakes. Dissimilar to the fog that she’s been in ever since Bobby’s headlights blinded her on that country road three days ago. That’s what the calendar says, at least, even though sometimes she feels like it was only yesterday, and then sometimes it feels like a decade ago. 

Her woolgathering is broken by an insistent meow. 

Given the name of a well-known philosopher upon adoption that was quickly changed when even Strand himself found the name both pompous and a mouthful, his cat headbutts her leg to get her attention. 

“Hey, Tottie.” Reaching down, she scratches under his chin and along his back, smiling as he hams it up.

“I see my instructions to him were unclear,” comes Strand’s voice from the doorway where he leans, arms crossed across his chest. “He was supposed to relay my message.”

“Oh, he did,” Alex insists, patting Tottie’s side as he chirps in protest of the accusation. “There was just a translation error.” 

“Ah, my mistake. Well, dinner’s ready.”

She gets up and follows him into the kitchen, where he pours them each a glass of wine. A radio in the corner plays soft jazz. It’s a testament to her time spent with the man that she finds herself humming along in her head to the tune. 

“Okay, spill,” she demands later as she twirls pasta around her fork. “You’ve been mulling over something.” At his look of surprise, she offers a reassuring smile. “You get this look on your face.”

He acknowledges her repetition of his earlier words with a breathy chuckle, before he schools his features and takes a sip of wine. Liquid courage, and all that. 

“Nic texted me. He wanted to relay a request from the local bureau office. They want you to come in to answer more questions.”

“Sure. It should only take an hour or so, at most, right?” she reasons with a shrug, all while reaching for the garlic bread and pulling it apart. 

Strand’s eyes flicker down to the dismantled creation; she drops the bread back down onto her plate and wills her hands to be still. 

“You don’t have to. You realize that, right?” 

“I know. But...” she trails off, unsure how to express the guilt she feels. 

After Bobby’s, the news showed the faces of those missing from the area. The locals and tourists and runaways and truck drivers and thru-hikers, their profile pictures and cropped family photos floating over a black screen. She feels like she owed them, in some roundabout way. Especially since she’d all but planned to use their disappearances as fodder for her episode. 

“But if I know something that could help, then why wouldn’t I? If it were…” she stops to pull in a breath. “If he’d gotten away with it, and the next person after me survived, wouldn’t I want them to do the same for me?” 

“You’re not obligated to,” he points out, frowning at either the prospect of her death or what he must believe is her misplaced guilt, she isn’t sure. 

“I know that. But I want to. And then -- then we can come back here.” 

“And do what? We certainly won’t be watching any tapes; that’s one subject I’m not willing to budge on. You’ve been relieved of your duties for the next three weeks, and I stand by your producers’ demands that you keep out of work-related tasks.” His eyes are intense, but his voice is gentle when he speaks. “You need to give yourself time.” 

“There is this creepy, abandoned hospital I’ve been wanting to check out up in Everett--”

“Alex.”

“I’m kidding. I think I should be allowed to return to using humor as a coping mechanism.” She laughs when he rolls his eyes. 

“As if that ability of yours ever left.” 

“We’ll figure something out.”

He reaches for her hand, warm against her own. 

“I would… like you to stay. If that’s alright. With you.”

She laces her fingers through his and smiles. 

“I would most definitely like to stay.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The two ghost hunters from LA are exactly who you think they are. The other initials in the group chat at the end are fellow horror podcast hosts.  
> Alex's suggestion of the abandoned hospital in Everett is a reference to one of my other fics, though this story isn't connected in any way to that series.


End file.
